fl«ei5ICflN 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

DDDDfl75D142 



(^IflfiGL tlNSLGY MURPHY 




Class. 
Book 
Copyright N"_ 



C0I5fRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




William Penn 



A 



merican 



Lead 



ers 



By 



Mabel Ansley Murphy 

Author of "Greathearted Women" 




PHILADELPHIA 

THE UNION PRESS 

1816 Chestnut Street 






Copyright, 1920, by the 
American Sunday-School Union 



©C(.A597100 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. The Father of Pennsylvania 9 

William Penn (1644-1718) 
II, The Man Who Stood Before Kings. 17 
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) 

III. The Father of His Country 25 

George Washington (1732-1799) 

IV. The Financier of the Revolution . . 35 

Robert Morris (1734-1806) 

V. The Orator of the Revolution 45 

Patrick Henry (1736-1799) 

VI. The Friend of the People 55 

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 

VII. The Little Lion 65 

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) 
VIII. The Author of the Monroe Doc- 
trine 73 

James Monroe (1758-1831) 

IX. The Monarch of the Fur Trade 81 

John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) 
5 



6 CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

X. The Pathfinders 91 

William Clark (1770-1838) 
Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) 
John C. Fremont (1813-1890) 

XI. The Mill Boy of the Slashes 103 

Henry Clay (1777-1852) 
XII. The Great Expounder of the Con- 
stitution 113 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) 

XIII. The Liberator of Texas 123 

Sam Houston (1793-1863) 

XIV. The Frlend of the Friendless 131 

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) 

XV. The Man of the People 139 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 

XVI. The Antislavery Editor 149 

Horace Greeley (1811-1872) 

XVII. The Plumed Knight 157 

James G. Blaine (1830-1893) 
XVIII. The Man of the Open Door and 

THE Golden Rule 167 

John Hay (1839-1905) 

• XIX. The Boy Without a Birthday 177 

Booker T. Washington (1857-1915) 

XX. The American 189 

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 



INTRODUCTION 



We all like to read stories. And long before we 
were able to read for ourselves, we showed our 
innate love of tales by begging, "Tell me a story!" 
If the story was forthcoming, our first comment 
was, "Is it a true story?" 

Biography not only tells us stories, but it tells 
us true tales, tales more wonderful than the im- 
agination has ever cast in fiction form. So many 
generations have known this that the truth has 
crystallized into a proverb: "Truth is stranger than 
fiction." 

Not only has the true story a charm lacking in 
fiction, but its characters are greater than any the 
imagination depicts. Why? Because the men and 
women of fiction are the creations of the human 
mind, while the men and women of biography are 
the creations of the infinite mind of God himself. 

We love — and rightly — our fiction friends. But 
what one ever measured up in nobility of char- 
acter to Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt? 
So, while we keep our friends of fancy, let us en- 
large this circle of companions of the spirit by ask- 
ing into it the great and good of all time. It is well 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

to begin modestly, perhaps, by forming a speaking 
acquaintance with some of the men who helped to 
make our own country. These sketches, brief as 
they are, may introduce you to some men whom 
you will want to know better. They are ready to 
be your friends — friends whose latchstring is always 
out; friends who will talk to you when you will; 
friends who never take offence when you are in- 
different. 

Nor will you have to wait for hours to snatch 
a hasty interview. Great though these men are, 
your pleasure is theirs. They will grant you audi- 
ence when you will. In them you will find the same 
traits as in yourself, and you will learn that all men 
are brothers, that any difference there may be is 

of degree and not of kind. 

^ M. A. M. 



AMERICAN LEADERS 



CHAPTER I 
The Father of Pennsylvania 

On October 14, 1644, on Tower Hill, in London, 
William Penn was born. His father was a wealthy 
admiral in the British navy, and from his mother, 
a woman of unselfish character, William inherited 
many noble traits. When he was sixteen years of 
age he went to Oxford, where he studied Greek 
and Latin, and learned to speak with ease French, 
German, Italian, and Dutch. He excelled not only 
in his studies but also in games and sports, espe- 
cially in boating. 

One day he heard a Quaker preach. The Quak- 
ers, or Friends, believed that in God's sight aU 
men were equal; so in speaking to everyone they 
used the intimate form of address of "thee" and 
"thou." They also dressed in long gray coats in 
token of this belief — that each man stood on the 
same level as his fellow-man. In their meetings 
there was neither music nor preacher, but each 
member waited in silence for God's message. After 

9 



10 AMERICAN LEADERS 

listening to Thomas Loe, William felt that he could 
no longer attend the college chapel exercises. For 
refusing to do this he was fined. 

This angered Penn's father. He thought that a 
gentleman's son should have nothing to do with so 
lowly a sect. In order to make William forget the 
Friends, Admiral Penn filled his purse and sent him 
to Paris in the company of a rich nobleman. Dur- 
ing the two years William lived there he was a 
great favorite at the court of Louis XIV, and when 
he came home his father was proud of him. He 
carried his sword in the French fashion; he lisped 
fine speeches to the ladies; he was courtly in his 
manner to all. In addition, he was so tall and well 
built, he had such beautiful dark eyes and hair, 
that in all England there was no young man more 
handsome. 

But when the dreadful plague of 1665 came to 
London, William again began to think of Quaker- 
ism. This time, to turn his thoughts from the sub- 
ject, his father sent him to Ireland to manage the 
Penn estates. There William helped to put down 
a mutiny. For this service he was given a com- 
pany of soldiers to command. The young man was 
so proud of his military success that he had himself 
painted in his armor. Shortly afterward he chanced 
again to hear Thomas Loe. This time he joined 
the Society of Friends and put on their sober garb. 



THE FATHER OF PENNSYLVANIA 11 

At once his father called him home and ordered 
him to give up his new belief. When William re- 
fused the admiral turned him out of doors. But 
his mother begged that he might be forgiven, and 
finally William returned home. Soon afterward 
Admiral Penn died and left all his large estates to 
his son. William at once determined to use his 
fortune for the good of others, especially for the 
good of the Quakers, who were everywhere per- 
secuted. 

His opportunity came in this way: Charles II, 
king of England, owed Admiral Penn a great sum 
of money. Penn offered to take in payment a tract 
of land in America, planning to use it as a home for 
the persecuted Friends. The king willingly paid 
his debt in this way, deeding to Penn a stretch of 
land three hundred miles long and one hundred and 
sixty wide, lying directly west of the Delaware 
River. ''Sylvania," or "Land of Woods," Penn 
named it, but the king suggested tliat "Penn" be 
prefixed in honor of Admiral Penn. 

Eagerly the Quakers accepted Penn's invitation 
to come to this refuge. In 1681 almost three 
thousand Friends crossed the sea to this new land 
where they might worship God in their own way. 
The next year Penn himself came with another 
party. He said to the colonists, "You shall be 
governed by laws of your own making." That 



12 AMERICAN LEADERS 

this might be, he drew up carefully a plan of gov- 
ernment, which arranged, among other provisions, 
that only a Christian could be a citizen or hold 
office. 

Under Penn's direction the Friends laid out a 
city on the high ground where the Schuylkill 
River joins the Delaware. The streets running 
north and south were numbered, as Front, Second, 
Third, and so on; those running east and west 
were named for trees which were plentiful in the 
vicinity, as Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine. The 
city itself he named Philadelphia, "The City of 
Brotherly Love," for that was the spirit he wished 
the people to show toward one another. 

In his wise planning Penn did not forget the 
Indians, the original owners of the land. Under 
a great elm tree he met the chiefs, and paid for 
their land in knives, kettles, beads, and other 
things they wanted. They exchanged pledges of 
friendship with Penn, telling him, "So long as 
the sun and moon shall endure, the Indians and 
the Friends will live together in love and peace." 
In token of this pledge they gave Penn a belt of 
wampum, in which were woven the figures of an 
Indian and a white man clasping hands. This 
treaty between Penn and the Indians is said to 
be the only treaty "never sworn to and never 
broken." 



THE FATHER OF PENNSYLVANIA 13 

Soon afterward Penn returned to England. 
James II had fled to France, and his son-in-law, 
William of Orange, was ruling in his stead. Penn 
was accused of receiving letters from his warm 
friend James II, and on the charge of treason he 
was thrown into prison. At the same time the 
king claimed that on account of Penn's absence his 
colony was in disorder. William announced that 
though the Quakers did not believe in fighting, 
Pennsylvania must have military defence. He ap- 
pointed a governor who tried to muster into serv- 
ice all the men among the Friends. As a result 
there was great confusion in the colony. 

After many months Penn was cleared of all 
charges of treason, and allowed to return to his be- 
loved Pennsylvania. He opened a home in Phila- 
delphia and one in the country, on the Delaware 
River, even more beautiful. Here at Pennsburg 
Manor he entertained freely whoever came: Eng- 
lishmen, Swedes, Indians, or negroes. 

But trouble arose. England and France were at 
war, and the trouble between them spread to their 
colonies in America. King William announced that 
all English colonies must be put under governors 
appointed by him. Penn sailed at once for England 
to urge his own claim. Shortly after he landed the 
king died and was succeeded by Queen Anne, a 
warm friend of Penn. Immediately she assured 



14 AMERICAN LEADERS 

him that he and his heirs after him should govern 
the province. 

Business matters detained Penn in England, and 
in course of time another trial came upon him. A 
dishonest agent of his English property brought a 
false claim against him. Penn refused to pay and 
was thrown into prison. Just at this time his 
health failed. Powerful friends secured his release, 
but too late to restore him to strength and vigor. 
In 1718 he died, leaving as a heritage the name of 
being one of the most upright men of his time ; one 
who all his life tried to serve God and obey the 
Golden Rule. Until the American Colonies formed 
a united goverimient, Penn's heirs governed the 
colony he had founded so wisely. 




Benjamin Franklin 



CHAPTER II 

The Man Who Stood Before Kings 

"Franklin's life is the most interesting, the 
most uniformly successful ever yet lived by any 
American." Isn't that a bold statement? But no 
bolder than this: ' 'Franklin was one of the greatest 
philosophers, scientists, statesmen, and authors of 
all time." Yet both quotations tell the truth. 

He was born January 17, 1706, in a little house 
opposite Old South Church in Boston. He was the 
youngest boy in a family of seventeen. His father, 
a soap-boiler and candle-maker, found it hard work 
to clothe and feed his family, so at ten years of age 
Benjamin left school to work in his father's shop. 
How Benjamin did hate the business! But he 
worked faithfully. Most of his spare time he spent 
in reading. He had but few books — Plutarch's 
Lives, Robinson Crusoe, and Pilgrirn's Progress — 
but those he read and reread. 

After a time his father apprenticed him to an 
older half-brother, James, who was a printer. In 
this position Benjamin had access to more books. 
That he might buy books he proposed to his 
brother that he board himself on half the money 
the board had been costing so that he might have 

17 



18 AMEIUCAN LEADERS 

the other half for books. James consented and 
Benjamin was able to buy some of the books he 
longed for. In thne he contributed articles to his 
brother's paper, which were received with great 
favor. But his brother was a stern, hard task- 
master, who often beat Benjamin cruelly. Finally 
he determined to leave his brother's employ. 

By seUing some of his loved books he got enough 
money to pay his way to New York. No work was 
there for a printer, so he pushed on to Philadelphia. 
The last fifty miles he went on foot, through a 
heavy rain, and he reached Philadelphia in October, 
1723. His money was almost gone, so he went into 
a bakery and bought three large rolls for breakfast. 
He tucked one under each arm, and went up 
Market Street eating the third. Deborah Read 
laughed at the awkward boy passing her father's 
door, little thinking that later she would be his wife. 

In a short time Benjamin found work at his trade. 
Then followed a long struggle with poverty. But 
he was always cheerful and light-hearted. One of 
his rules for conduct was: "Whatever you have to 
do, do it with a brave heart." 

In 1729 he was able to buy the Pennsylvania 
Gazette, which he made the best newspaper in 
America. He had also a printing and stationeiy 
business. In 1732 he began to publish Poor Rich- 
ard's Almanack. For the next twenty-five years he 



THE MAN WHO STOOD BEFORE KINGS 19 

sold each year ten thousand copies of this almanac, 
and the wise sayings of "Poor Richard" are still 
quoted today. Some are: "One today is worth two 
tomorrows" ; "God helps them that help themselves" ; 
"Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt." 
Many have been translated into French, Danish, 
Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Bohe- 
mian, modern Greek, Welsh, GaeUc, and Chinese. 

All this time Franklin studied. He spoke French, 
Italian, Spanish, and Latin. He learned, too, to 
play on the harp, guitar, violin, and vioHncello. 

Always he showed a deep interest in public af- 
fairs. He started a subscription for an academy, 
which grew into the University of Pennsylvania. 
He organized the first police force and the first 
fire department in the Colonies. He was one of the 
founders of the American Philosophical Society; he 
was originator of the street-paving system, and im- 
proved the method of city lighting; he helped to 
found a city hospital, and also started one of the 
earliest — if not the earliest — circulating libraries in 
the Colonies. In 1753 he, with William Hunter, 
was put in charge of the post office, which posi- 
tion he held until 1774. He greatly increased the 
efficiency of the postal service, and visited nearly 
every post office in the Colonies. 

When he was about forty-two years of age he 
began to study the sciences. In order to give his 



20 AMERICAN LEADERS 

entire time to this he finally sold his printing- 
house, newspaper, and almanac for ninety thou- 
sand dollars and retired from business. His scien- 
tific studies soon bore fruit. He invented the 
Franklin stove, which became very popular, be- 
cause it was so much better than an open fireplace. 
He showed how farmers could raise better crops by 
using fertilizers. He advised the use of oil to calm 
the waves during a storm. 

But his greatest scientific discovery was that 
lightning is the same thing as electricity. Making 
a kite out of silk and flying it with a hempen cord, 
he was able to draw so much electricity from a 
thunder cloud that he could get sparks from an 
iron key fastened to the kite string. It was a great 
discovery and made Benjamin Franklin famous as 
a scientist. Both the Royal Medical Society of 
Paris and the Medical Society of London recog- 
nized Franklin's knowledge of medicine by elect- 
ing him to their membership. His most important 
direct contribution to pathology was the invention 
of the bifocal eyeglass, which he himself used. 

As an author Franklin is by no means to be over- 
looked. His Autobiography is classed with the few 
great autobiographies ever written, and he wrote 
many political pamphlets, to which are related his 
economic writings. His work on the Gazette and 
his Sayings of Poor Richard we have noted. 



THE MAN WHO STOOD BEFORE KINGS 21 

Only a few of Franklin's many public services 
can be noted here. Just before the Revolutionary 
War he was sent to England to secure the repeal of 
the Stamp Act. He was elected to the Continental 
Congress, where he served on as many as ten com- 
mittees. He was one of the five men appointed to 
write the Declaration of Independence. After the 
signing of this historic document on July 4, 1776, 
he was sent to France to secure aid for the Ameri- 
can cause. The aid which France gave us was 
largely because of Franklin's services. 

In 1785 Franklin left France, after having repre- 
sented his country there for nearly ten years. All 
France was sorry to see him go. When he landed in 
America, cannon, church bells, and crowds greeted 
him with glad welcome. He was made governor of 
Pennsylvania, and served three terms. He served 
as a delegate to the convention that drafted the 
Constitution of the United States. 

April 17, 1790, near midnight, this great man 
slept quietly out of this life. By his own request 
he was buried beside his wife, under a plain marble 
slab in Christ Church Cemetery, Philadelphia. 
The inscription reads simply: 



BENJAMIN I 

^^j) I FRANKLIN 

DEBORAH ^^^^ 




George Washington 



CHAPTER III 

The Father of His Country 

Our first and best — his ashes lie 
Beneath his own Virginia sky. 

So sang John Greenleaf Whittier at the dedica- 
tion of the arch at Washington Square, New York 
City, in 1889. Not a schoolboy in the land but 
knows that resting place— the sunny slopes of 
Mount Vernon overlooking the Potomac River 
just a few miles below Washington. For over a 
century this peaceful spot has been the visible 
center of the nation's patriotism. There is not a 
day in the year but some pilgrim stands uncov- 
ered by the vault where sleeps "the Father of his 
Country." Reverently they pass through the house 
that knew him in life. December 14, 1799, he left 
it forever, but the love of a nation keeps it as if its 
door had closed after him but yesterday. 

Not so with his birthplace in Westmoreland 
County, Virginia, some twenty miles below Wash- 
ington on the Potomac River. No one has lived on 
the farm since fire destroyed the house and negro 
cabins when Washington was a little boy. But a 
plain shaft stands in the long-abandoned clearing, 
the nook wrested from the wilderness by Washing- 

25 



26 AMERICAN LEADERS 

ton's great-grandfather in 1657. To him who seeks 
the deserted spot, the marble says : 

Washington's Birthplace. 
Erected by the United States, A. D. 1895. 

George Washington was born at a time when 
the country had just been freed from fear of Indian 
massacres. He went to a "little, old field school 
kept by one of his father's tenstnts, named Hobby, 
an honest, poor old man, both sexton and school- 
master." Here, as later, George was a leader. He 
divided his schoolmates into two divisions, French 
and American. William Bustle commanded the 
French, George himself the American. Every day, 
with cornstalks for muskets and gourds for drums, 
these two brave armies turned out to march and 
fight. 

His father's death put an end to the plan of send- 
ing George to England for his education, but he 
studied so diligently at home and at a little school 
near Bridges Creek, that at sixteen he was com- 
missioned by Lord Fairfax to survey his lands in the 
New World. After three years of this work in the 
primeval forests of western Virginia, George Wash- 
ington received from William and Mary College the 
equivalent of a degree in civil engineering. 

At this time "he was straight as an Indian, six 
feet, two inches in his stockings, weighing one hun- 



THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY 27 

dred and seventy-five pounds." He had light- 
brown hair, blue-gray penetrating eyes, a firm 
mouth, and a way about him that won friends, even 
though he was naturally reserved and retiring. 
Even thus early in life those about him were con- 
scious of his reserve power, the power which led 
one of his coworkers later in life to say, ''There was 
ever about the man something which impressed one 
with the conviction that he was fully equal to what 
he had to do. He was never hurried, but in his 
study, at a levee, before Congress, at the head of 
an army, he was ever just what the situation re- 
quired." 

These words were true of George Washington as 
President. True, too, when the young surveyor 
was sent by the king one thousand miles into the 
wilderness in the middle of winter to discover the 
exact extent of the trouble between the French and 
Indians on one side and the English on the other. 
True, also, when war finally broke out between 
these fighting frontiers, and Washington, as com- 
mander of the Virginia forces, was the man who 
saved from utter massacre the fleeing troops after 
Braddock's disgraceful defeat. True, as well, when, 
this seven years' war ended, he married and retired 
to his Virginia estate, which he managed success- 
fully while still serving the public as a member of 
the House of Burgesses. 



28 AMERICAN LEADERS 

These quiet years for him were stormy ones for 
the country. Troubles with England thickened and 
the Colonies, perplexed, called the First Continental 
Congress. Washington was a delegate, and though 
he said but little the other representatives knew 
him for the strongest man among them. So also 
did the men of the Second Continental Congress, 
which in 1775 declared war against England and 
appointed George Washington commander in chief 
of the armies. 

July 3, under the great elm still standing at Cam- 
bridge, Mass., he assumed command. From that 
moment he was the inspiration of the Revolution. 
His coworkers were brilliant and able and Wash- 
ington avaOed himself to the utmost of their advice 
and help ; yet these men were ever the first to give 
credit to Washington for bringing about the success 
of the Revolution. Great they all were, but they 
looked up to him as greater. 

Of four pitched battles against troops led by dis- 
tinguished British officers he lost three and made of 
the fourth a draw. But he made his defeats step- 
ping-stones to success, for he had a cautious, bal- 
ancing, weighing habit that enabled him to ''grasp 
the general strategy of war so thoroughly that no 
military critic has ever detected him in a mistake." 

He conducted successfully two sieges, Boston and 
Yorktown; brilliantly he destroyed two outposts, 



THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY 29 

Trenton and Princeton; and all the time he dis- 
solved jealousies, reconciled differences, and held 
together an army, ofttimes without having food, 
clothing, or shelter to give it. "Valley Forge will 
ever be a synonym for suffering." It was there — 
where three thousand soldiers walked barefoot in 
the snow — that a Quaker farmer, passing a thicket, 
heard a deep voice speaking. Peering between the 
branches, he saw Washington on his knees, praying 
so earnestly that his cheeks were wet. The farmer 
went home and told what he had seen, adding, "Now 
I know America will prevail." 

America did. Then came to Washington a great 
temptation. The restless, unpaid army besought 
him as a military dictator to take control of the 
disordered country. Before, in the world's history, 
the same situation had tempted great leaders: 
Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon. Each in turn had 
compromised with this dream of power or yielded 
to it. Not so with Washington. Indignantly he 
put aside the request; not because he feared re- 
sponsibility, but because he saw clearly that was not 
the wise way to meet the situation. 

The little room in New York where he said fare- 
well to his staff is kept to this day to show to vis- 
itors, but the formal resignation to Congress of his 
commission as commander took place at Annap- 
olis, December 23, 1783, and his farewell address 



30 AMERICAN LEADERS 

is still cherished as one of the two most memorable 
speeches ever made in the United States. 

The Confederation failed to bring order out of 
chaos, and, together with Madison and Hamilton, 
Washington evolved a better union, a national 
movement, with a constitution which his com- 
manding will, more than any other single factor, 
brought into existence. 

All turned to Washington to head the new gov- 
ernment, and for eight years he served as Presi- 
dent. Henry Cabot Lodge says: "He came into 
office the heir of a bankrupt, broken-down con- 
federation. When he laid down the Presidency we 
had an organized government, an established 
revenue, a funded debt, a high credit, an efficient 
system of banking, and an army." 

Then, his duty to his country ended, he went 
back to his farm and to the simple life of a country 
gentleman. But that meant rising at four in the 
morning and riding ten to fourteen miles every day; 
for eight thousand acres, even when divided up into 
farms, cannot be visited in one round. Punctually 
at a quarter to three he would return home and at 
three sit down to dinner. At nine the quiet home 
evening ended. 

He carried on this active life. to the very end of 
his days. One rainy morning he was busy with a 
compass marking out improvements in the grounds 



THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY 31 

about Mount Vernon. Two evenings later his life 
on earth was ended. 

Not so his influence. So long as the republic 
endures, his example and his words will be the in- 
spiration of its people. In a yellowed letter that he 
wrote in 1793 we read a message for today: 

"If it can be esteemed a happiness to live in an 
age of great and interesting events, we of the pres- 
ent time are very highly favored. The rapidity of 
national revolutions appears no less astonishing 
than their magnitude. In what they will terminate 
is known only to the Great Ruler of events. Con- 
fiding in his wisdom and goodness we may safely 
trust the issue to him, only taking care to perform 
that part assigned to us in a way that reason and 
our own conscience approve." 




Robert Morris 



CHAPTER IV 

The Financier of the Revolution 

The "financier!" The word itself has a cold, cal- 
culating, disinterested sound, and in repeating it it 
is hard to picture the warm, kindly personality of 
the man known by that name. So generous and 
loyal was he that he numbered many, many friends 
among the greatest of Americans. The closest of 
these friends were John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, 
Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington; but 
for all who came his way he kept open house. So 
open-hearted was he that he moved out of his own 
home to give the President a suitable residence 
while the national capital was in Philadelphia. 

Greatly as men enjoyed his hospitality, their 
love was given to the man himself — just, sincere, 
free from all vanity, keen-minded, optimistic, and 
given to witty turns of speech whatever the topic 
under discussion. 

''When future generations celebrate the names of 
Washington and Franklin, they will add that of 
Morris," says one historian. Another adds, "Had 
it not been for Robert Morris' services in raising 
funds, it is hard to see how the Revolution could 
have succeeded." 

35 



36 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Liverpool, England, where he was born Jan- 
uary 31, 1734, was his home until he was thirteen. 
At that age the motherless boy joined his father, 
who was a buyer of tobacco in America. He was 
put into school, but so slow was he with his studies 
that his father gladly accepted an offer made by a 
Philadelphia merchant to give him a place in his 
business. 

At once Robert proved that he had a business 
head if not a scholar's pate. He advanced rapidly, 
and at the age of twenty became a member of the 
firm. "Willing & Morris" soon took rank among 
the first business houses of the city. They owned 
a fleet of trading vessels, and many a voyage 
Robert Morris made in the interests of the firm. 
On one of these trips the ship was captured by the 
French, with whom England was at war. How- 
ever, by repairing a watch for a French officer, 
he secured permission to get off at a port where he 
could take ship for America. 

It meant great financial loss for the firm, yet 
Robert Morris supported the colonies in their de- 
termination to buy no article made in England so 
long as the Stamp Act was in force. However, at 
the beginning of the Revolution he counseled mod- 
eration, and he hoped that the colonists would find 
a way out of their difficulties other than the rough 
road of war. At the same time he signed the 



THE FINANCIER OF THE REVOLUTION 37 

Declaration of Independence as a member of the 
Second Continental Congress. Indeed, since April 
of 1776 he had been serving as a committee of one 
to suggest methods of procuring money for the 
impending war. Does it seem strange that in this 
way he was willing to serve the Congress whose 
judgment did not coincide with his own? Hear his 
own explanation: 

"I think the individual who declines the service 
of his country because its councils are not con- 
formable to his ideas makes but a bad subject; 
a good one can follow, if he cannot lead." 

Against the advice of Morris Congress issued 
paper money. Soon so much was in circulation 
that paper was worth almost nothing. Shoes cost 
$125 a pair; hats, $400. Robert Morris never once 
said, "I told you so," but instead he bent all his 
energ}^ to retrieve the mistake. 

Trenton was a splendid victory for the ragged 
Continental Army, but the day after the battle 
Washington wrote to Robert Morris that unless he 
had $50,000 in gold and silver many of his men 
would not reenlist and follow up the success won. 
Their families were in dire distress and the men 
would not accept the worthless paper bills. He 
did not need to add that unless the campaign was 
pushed at this time in all probability the American 
cause was lost. But Morris understood. So, early 



38 AMERICAN LEADERS 

New Year's Day, even before it was really light, he 
routed his friends out of bed, begging them for 
money. He collected and sent the entire amount 
in "hard money" to the man whom he termed ''the 
greatest man on earth." 

Another time Washington needed cartridges. 
The Colonists had given all the lead they had ; every 
scrap to be found had gone for bullets. Just at this 
critical moment one of Robert Morris' vessels sailed 
up the river, loaded with ninety tons of lead. At 
once he set one hundred men to work molding 
bullets, and within two days Washington had the 
ammunition he so sorely needed. 

In 1781 Congress asked Robert Morris to serve 
as Superintendent of Finance, or as "the finaijcier" 
of the Government. He assented on condition that 
no more paper money be issued, adding, "The 
United States may command everything I have ex- 
cept integrity, and the loss of that would effectually 
disable me from serving them now." 

This was the literal truth, for men who did not 
trust the promises to pay made by Congress did 
believe that the word of Robert Morris was as good 
as gold. At one time his private notes, issued to 
meet the demands of the army and navy, amounted 
to $600,000. Not only did he borrow for the coun- 
try on his own credit, but he advanced every dollar 
of his own that he could lay his hands on. For 



THE FINANCIER OF THE REVOLUTION 39 

three long years he worked night and day raising 
the money to push the war to a victorious con- 
clusion. 

In Philadelphia he started the Bank of North 
America, the first bank ever incorporated in 
America for the purpose of serving the Govern- 
ment. He induced men of wealth to buy its stock 
and to put gold and silver into its vaults. When he 
had succeeded in establishing the bank's credit, he 
was able to do much more for the suffering army. 
From this bank in six months he loaned the Gov- 
ernment $400,000, and the state of Pennsylvania 
$80,000. 

During this arduous time he was "Agent of 
Marine" as well. That meant he had to see that 
the little navy was supported and built up. Not 
until November 1, 1784, was he relieved from these 
duties. He was a member of the Congress that 
framed the Constitution, and served in the first 
Senate. Afterward he was a member of the Penn- 
sylvania Legislature. Washington asked him to be 
Secretary of the Treasury in the new government, 
but Morris declined, sajang, "Alexander Hamilton 
is a better financier. He is the one for the place." 

Robert Morris had given much of his fortune to 
his country, but so successful were his business 
ventures after the war that soon he was again one 
of the wealthiest men of the day. When every 



40 AMERICAN LEADERS 

obligation incurred during the war was met, he 
lavished money on his wife and seven children with 
princely generosity. Mrs. Morris, a most charming 
woman, was known as the "second lady in the 
land," for during Washington's administrations she 
always stood in the first place on Mrs. Washing- 
ton's right at public functions. "Morris' home was 
the real social capital of the Middle States." The 
home best loved by the family was on a bluff above 
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, a great country 
house on the knoll known today as Lemon Hill. 

Unfortunately there came a time when generosity 
outran discretion. For $50,000 Robert Morris 
bought the square in Philadelphia enclosed by 
Chestnut, Walnut, Seventh, and Eighth Streets. 
Here he began "the grandest house ever attempted 
in Philadelphia for the purpose of private life." 
Owing to the procrastination and extravagance of 
the architect, this marble palace was never finished. 
In 1800 its doors and windows were boarded up, and 
in time it was torn down. 

The man who began this house, however, had 
vision far in advance of his day. After the war he 
bought heavily of land in Washington, then only a 
city on paper. He bought thousands of acres in the 
South, in western New York, and in Pennsylvania, 
thinking the country would grow by leaps and 
bounds. 



THE FINANCIER OF THE REVOLUTION 41 

"Don't go into these speculations, Morris," 
Washington urged. "They will ruin you." 

"I cannot help it," answered Morris. 'T must 
go in deep or not at all. I must either be a man or 
a mouse." 

But the time came when he needed ready money, 
and he could find no purchasers for these wild lands, 
or for the lots in the future Washington. A dis- 
honest partner involved him in many trying law- 
suits and finally had him imprisoned for debt. 

Friends and family did all that they could to 
extricate him from his difficulties, but the pit he 
had dug was too deep. His debts totaled $3,000,000 
— today in value three times that amount. He was 
made as comfortable as possible in prison, where 
his wife and daughter visited him daily. Other 
friends came, among them Washington; but the 
laws of the day permitted no hope of his release. 
Jefferson, when organizing his Cabinet, wrote to 
James Monroe: "If Robert Morris could get from 
confinement and the public gave him confidence, he 
would be a most valuable officer as Secretary of the 
Navy." 

Morris endeavored to bear his lot philosophically. 
"To meet the bad as well as the good with fortitude, 
and to make the best of whatever happens, this I 
can do, thank God!" he wrote to his son. Again 
he wrote, "I will do all I can, consistently with the 



42 AMERICAN LEADERS 

principles of integrity, to make the best of my af- 
fairs." His life in prison exemplified one of his 
earlier sayings: "Dignity is in duty and in virtue, 
not in the sound of swelling expressions." 

At last, possibly with Morris' case in mind. Con- 
gress passed a law providing that a debtor, on peti- 
tion of his creditors, could be declared bankrupt 
and set free. So August 26, 1801, after three and 
one-half years in prison, Robert Morris stepped out, 
a free man. Gouverneur Morris, ever a fast friend, 
entertained him as an honored guest in the summer 
of 1802, but for the most part he passed his time 
quietly in the little home friends had saved for his 
wife. Old, broken in body and spirit because of his 
inability to clear his name, the man who had sacri- 
ficed all to help create a new republic passed out of 
this life May 7, 1806. In the family vault, in Christ 
Churchyard, Philadelphia, lie his mortal remains. 




Patrick Henry Delivering His Famous Speech, 
March, 1775 



CHAPTER V 

The Orator of the Revolution 

On the summit of Church Hill, Richmond, Va., 
stands a little white frame church whose walls 
echoed one spring day to words that will live as 
long as the Republic endures. St. John's stands in 
the midst of a three-century-old God's Acre. An- 
cient trees shelter it, the perfume of roses is heavy 
on the air ; in this historic spot sleeps the man whose 
words made this place a shrine of patriotism. 
Many miles westward, on his own plantation of 
Red Hill, a marble shaft tells the curious, "His 
fame is his best epitaph." 

To millions of Americans that fame rests upon 
the speech made in St. John's on a warm March 
day in 1775. The church was crowded, and people 
hung over the sills of the opened windows to hear 
the proceedings of the second Revolutionary con- 
vention of Virginia. Before it was the question of 
arming the militia for the defense of the state. 
Many members argued, "War with Great Britain 
may come, but yet it may be prevented." 

"May come!" exclaimed Patrick Henry. "May 
come? It has already come!" And rising in his 
pew — hallowed to this day by his ringing words — 

45 



46 AMERICAN LEADERS 

he broke out into that remarkable speech which 
"fills so great a space in the annals of Revolutionary 
eloquence." 

Its climax was reached in the words, "Gentle- 
men may cry out 'Peace! peace!' but there is no 
peace. . . . Our brethren are already in the 
field. ... Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to 
be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? 
Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course 
others may take, but as for me give me liberty, or 
give me death!" 

Virginia's reply was instant and whole-hearted, 
for in response she took her place by Massachusetts 
in the fight for freedom. 

Little promise of the eloquence that was to lift 
the name of Patrick Henry "almost to the rank of 
some mythical hero of romance" had been given by 
the boy born May 29, 1736, on a backwoods clear- 
ing. In fact up to the time he was twenty-four the 
world termed him shiftless. Nor was it wholly 
wrong. As a little boy he would not study, though 
his Scotch father tried to urge him to diligence by 
telling him tales of his ancestors, some of them 
scholars of renown. But the call of the forest about 
the little farm was stronger than the urge of 
shadowy forefathers, and Patrick hunted and fished, 
or spent long hours dreaming, lying full length on 
some mossy bed in the depths of the woods. The 



THE ORATOR OF THE REVOLUTION 47 

one thing he did regularly was to go to church each 
Sunday with his dearly loved mother. And with 
equal regularity he afterward repeated to her the 
text, the sermon heads, and as much of the dis- 
course as he could remember. 

With nothing at all to live on he married at 
eighteen a neighbor's daughter, younger than him- 
self. He tried to make a living by keeping store. 
When he failed at this he went to work with the 
negroes his wife's father gave him on a patch of 
land donated by his father. Again failure was his 
portion and again he essayed storekeeping. Though 
he was the best fiddler, the best story-teller, and 
the jolliest joker in the country, he could not earn 
a living for his wife and children. "But," said his 
wife's father, endeavoring to sum up his good 
points, "he does not swear, nor drink, nor keep bad 
company." 

Then at twenty-three years of age he decided to 
study law ! So thoroughly in earnest was he that in 
four months he prepared himself to pass the state 
examinations. 

Soon his opportunity to practice came. Virginia 
had passed a law limiting the salaries of the clergy. 
This law the king had declared null and void. In 
the ranks of Virginia's clergy were many good and 
earnest men, but unfortunately the larger number 
were in the Church only for the living it afforded 



48 AMERICAN LEADERS 

them. They loved horse-racing, dice-playing, and 
wine. They ignored the poor and courted the rich. 
So they sued the tax collectors for the pay due them 
under the king's decision. Few lawyers were will- 
ing to oppose them, but Patrick Henry, poor and 
unknown, had nothing to lose by undertaking the 
unpopular cause of the planters. 

His own father was presiding judge. Twenty 
clergymen sat in a row. The twelve jurymen faced 
them while the curious packed the little brick 
courtroom of Hanover County. Shabby, awkward, 
Patrick Henry rose timidly. He spoke slowly, al- 
most stopping at times. The planters hung their 
heads, the clergymen lifted their eyebrows super- 
ciliously, and Judge Henry covered his face with 
his hand. But in a flash the long, lank young man 
straightened to his full height and his words rang 
out, clear and strong. For many minutes he held 
the people spellbound by his logic and his elo- 
quence. 

"A king, by annulling so salutary a measure, de- 
generates into a tyrant and forfeits all right to his 
subjects' obedience!" he thundered. On he went 
with his plea, and tears streamed down the faces of 
his listeners. When he ceased the jury went out 
for five minutes to bring back a verdict of one penny 
damages. Then the crowd arose as one man and 
carried Patrick Henry out on their shoulders. 



THE ORATOR OF THE REVOLUTION 49 

This case, the "Parsons' Cause," brought Patrick 
Henry business in abundance, and that spelled 
money, advancement, and in time power as a 
politician. At last he had found his work, and into 
it he poured all the reserve strength he had ac- 
cumulated in his fruitless years. Politics called him 
first to the House of Burgesses, where he electrified 
the assembly by his bold speech asserting Virginia's 
right to fix her own taxes. He closed by saying, 
"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Crom- 
well, and George the Third — " 

"Treason! treason!" shouted the king's friends. 

"And George the Third may profit by their ex- 
ample !" he ended. Then folding his arms and draw- 
ing himself up to his full height, he cried, **If that 
be treason, make the most of it!" 

Virginia sent him as delegate to the First Con- 
tinental Congress, where he thrilled the meeting by 
declaring, "The distinctions between Virginians, 
Pennsylvahians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders 
are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an Ameri- 
can!" 

Home he came to be elected commander of the 
Revolutionary army — a post he resigned because 
he was needed in the law-making bodies of both the 
state and the new nation. He served as delegate 
to the Second Continental Congress, then for three 
successive terms as Governor of Virginia. It was he 



50 AMERICAN LEADERS 

who as Governor of Virginia sent George Rogers 
Clark to win the Northwestern Territory from the 
English. Because Clark succeeded, the country- 
known today as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, 
Michigan, and a part of Minnesota became a part 
of the new nation. 

Patrick Henry's health broke, and at the zenith 
of his career he retired to his plantation at Red 
Hill. The nation in vain offered him many posts 
of honor. He refused to serve as a member of the 
Constitutional Convention, as United States sen- 
ator, as governor of Virginia for the fourth time, as 
chief justice of the United States, as minister to 
Spain, as ambassador to France, and as vice-presi- 
dent of the United States. Yet, ever when he was 
needed to point the way to the people, he was ready 
to "put his body under" and use his eloquence in 
his country's service. 

So it was in 1799, when George Washington wrote 
to him urging that he show the people of his state 
that the laws made by Congress were binding on 
each state; for at this time Virginia was protesting 
that she could accept them or reject them at will. 

One March day the news that Patrick Henry was 
to speak at Charlottesville courthouse brought out 
the whole countryside, and caused Hampden and 
Sidney College in an adjoining county to suspend 
classes for the day. 



THE ORATOR OF THE REVOLUTION 51 

He began his speech as a bowed old man and 
spoke in a cracked, shrill voice. He ended it with 
head erect, blue eyes flashing fire, clear voice ring- 
ing out to the farthest listener of the thousands who 
overflowed the courtyard. 

"Let us preserve our strength united against 
whatever foreign nation may dare to enter our 
territory." This was his theme and nobly he de- 
veloped it. At the close, as he was carried half- 
fainting into the building, the crowd whispered one 
to another, "The sun has set in all his glory." 

Back to Red Hill the aged orator went, not again 
to leave it. For years before his retirement from 
the law, it had been his custom to spend one hour 
each day in prayer. This hour — at sunset — ^was 
sacred, never to be intruded upon. The closing 
days of his life this hour lengthened, perhaps be- 
cause his weakness shortened the time of family de- 
votions. On Sunday evening he was accustomed 
to read aloud from a volume of sermons, after which 
the family sang hymns while he accompanied the 
singing with his violin. This, too, could no longer 
be. But the man who ended his will by writing, 
"This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear 
family. The religion of Christ can give them one 
which will make them rich indeed" — this man, de- 
nied by bodily weakness the religious forms and 
customs dear to him for a lifetime, yet knew per- 



52 AMERICAN LEADERS 

feet peace in his last hours. "On the sixth of June 
he prayed a simple childlike prayer for his family, 
for his country, for his own soul. Then, fixing his 
eyes with much tenderness on his dear friend, Dr. 
Cabell, he asked that the doctor observe how great 
a reality and benefit religion was to a man about 
to die. ... He continued to breathe very softly 
for some moments, after which they who were look- 
ing upon him saw that his life had departed." 




Thomas Jefferson 



CHAPTER VI 

The Friend of the People 

Many of the founders of our nation were giants 
both in intellect and in body. None could better 
claim the name than Thomas Jefferson. He stood 
six feet two and one-half inches, "straight as a gun 
barrel," and he could lift one thousand pounds. 
Big of hand and foot, with angular features, red 
hair, blue eyes, and freckled skin, he was not a good- 
looking boy; but those who knew him at the end of 
life said he was "quite a handsome old man," 
Better than good looks, he had good humor, so that 
the "Jefferson temper, all music and sunshine," 
was a tradition not only in his own state but in the 
nation. 

April 2, 1743, this boy of the best blood of Vir- 
ginia was born. Although heir to aristocratic priv- 
ileges from youth he elected to claim no considera- 
tion other than that which he earned. Even as a 
little boy he showed a passion for learning. At 
nine years of age he studied Latin, Greek, and 
French, and two years later he wrote that music, 
mathematics, and architecture were his delight. 
From childhood until middle life, when his right 
wrist was broken by a fall, his violin was his joy 

55 



56 AMERICAN LEADERS 

and his recreation. Even while studying at William 
and Mary College, which he entered at the age of 
sixteen, he practiced two hours every day, although 
each day he was studying fifteen hours, and exer- 
cising only by a run of one mile out of town and 
back at twilight. 

- During college days, and the years following 
when he was studying law, he made enduring friend- 
ships. One of these friends — his daily companion — 
was the teacher of philosophy at the college, a man 
of bold and original thought; another was the gov- 
ernor of the state, with whom he dined once a week; 
and the third, the greatest lawyer of that time, 
George Wyeth, the man who trained also John 
Marshall and Henry Clay. 

Jefferson's summers were spent at Monticello, 
the one-thousand-acre farm he had inherited from 
his father. There his constant companion was 
Dabney Carr, who married Jefferson's sister. Un- 
der the shade of a great oak the two friends read 
Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists in the 
original, while dreaming of the future. One of these 
fancies was that when life here ended their bodies 
should Ue side by side under the oak. When Dab- 
ney Carr was only thirty his grave was made there, 
but Thomas Jefferson was eighty-three when the 
pact made in youth was consummated. 

Farming was his delight, and in seven years he 



THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 57 

increased his farm to five thousand acres. Every 
detail of the work interested him. He experi- 
mented with vines, nuts, melons, fruits, and vege- 
tables from Italy. He was by far the most scien- 
tific farmer in America. Though still in his 
twenties he was not only lawyer and farmer, but 
also surveyor, architect, surgeon enough to sew 
up a wound or set a broken bone, and astronomer 
of sufficient ability to calculate an eclipse. He 
danced as well as he played the violin, and by this 
time he had added Spanish, Italian, and Anglo- 
Saxon to the list of languages he had mastered. 

On the top of Monticello, a hill five hundred 
feet high, he began the house of his dreams. He 
was himself architect, builder, and landscape gar- 
dener. Nearly all the materials — including brick 
and nails — were made on his own place by negro 
slaves. His beautiful and charming wife brought 
him as a dowry forty thousand acres of land, and 
his plans grew apace. In those days slavery was 
deemed essential to farming, yet this man with his 
vast holdings worked most earnestly to abolish 
slavery! In 1778 he put a bill through the Virginia 
Assembly prohibiting further importation of slaves. 
He tried to have freedom given to all born after a 
certain date ; he tried to secure a law enabling Vir- 
ginia slave owners to free their slaves without send- 
ing them out of the state; and in later years he 



58 AMERICAN LEADERS 

tried to have slavery prohibited in the Northwest 
Territory after 1800. But public opinion was not 
with him. 

Reluctantly Jefferson wrote, "The day is not far 
distant when the state must adopt a plan to free its 
slaves. Nothing is more surely written in the book 
of fate than that these people are to be free. . . . 
I tremble for my country when I remember that 
God is just, for slavery is morally and politically 
wrong." 

At the age of twenty-six he began his public life 
as a member of the Virginia Assembly, and for 
forty years he served his country in office. He was 
a delegate to the First Continental Congress and to 
the second. At the second congress a committee 
of five, with Jefferson at its head, was appointed to 
draw up a paper stating that the colonies declared 
themselves "free and independent" states. For 
seven years Jefferson had written of America's 
wrongs. Now in immortal words he told the story 
again and set down the nation's resolve to be free. 
With the adoption of this Declaration of Independ- 
ence, July 4, 1776, the colonies became one nation 
with one thought — to win freedom at any cost. 

Back to Virginia Jefferson went to build a de- 
mocracy in that colony, the most aristocratic of 
the thirteen. For years he was the only American 
who really believed the mass of people were ready 



THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 59 

for self-government. "He led the future." After 
a bitter fight he ended the entail system by which 
all the land passed to the eldest son of a family. He 
fought long and hard to separate Church and State 
in Virginia. He secured the modification of the 
laws for capital punishment, the passing of wiser 
naturalization laws, and the moving of the state 
capital from Williamsburg to Richmond. He 
planned a complete system of state education, be- 
ginning at the kindergarten age and extending 
through a university course. But the counties would 
not tax themselves to carry out the realization of 
this wise and farsighted vision. 

He succeeded Patrick Henry as governor of Vir- 
ginia at the blackest period of the Revolutionary 
struggle. Jefferson's wife succumbed to the terrible 
strain of the war, and by her death Jefferson's in- 
vincible calm and poise was broken. For months 
he could do nothing. 

He was urgently needed in Congress and at last 
he accepted the call. The work of "the author of 
the Declaration of Independence" now gave him 
another sobriquet, "the father of the American dol- 
lar," for it was he who convinced Congress that our 
present form of currency was better than pounds, 
shillings, and pence. 

In 1784 Jefferson went abroad as Minister to 
France. He traveled much, studying social and 



60 AMERICAN LEADERS 

political life in the various countries. To South 
Carolina he sent Lombardy rice, the parent seed of 
the finest rice grown today in the United States. 
To the four colleges of the new nation, Yale, Har- 
vard, University of Pennsylvania, and William and 
Mary, he forwarded full information of all the new 
scientific discoveries and inventions. He sent 
Houdon to America to make the famous bust of 
Washington. He secured new designs for the state 
capitol at Richmond. 

Then in 1 789 he came home to serve as Secretary 
of State. Between him, the advocate of the least 
possible governing power, and Alexander Hamilton, 
the Secretary of the Treasury, believer in centraliza- 
tion of power, there was constant friction. In the 
building of the nation neither obtained recognition 
of all his plans, but each one contributed ideas vital 
to the new republic's welfare. 

After four years he returned to Monticello. He 
invented a new plow, a folding chair, the revolving 
chair now used in every office, and a folding top for 
carriages ; he made scientific experiments, and he 
compiled vocabularies of thirty Indian dialects. 
Of him a friend said, "He is the most industrious 
person I ever knew," and he himself wrote, "No 
person will have occasion to complain of the want 
of time who never loses any." 

In 1796 he was elected Vice-President. At the 



THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 61 

Capital he was welcomed by a company of artillery, 
carrying a huge flag voicing another title, "Jeffer- 
son, the Friend of the People." In 1800 he became 
President, the first to be inaugurated in Washing- 
ton. True to his democratic ideals he rode unat- 
tended, on horseback, to the Capitol. There he 
dismounted, hitched his horse to a fence, and walked 
into the Senate Chamber to deliver his inaugural. 
He served two terms as President, and during these 
eight years he guided the new nation wisely, though 
many comphcations with foreign powers threatened 
its security. He negotiated the purchase of the 
Louisiana territory, by which the area of the United 
States was more than doubled. The Presidents 
succeeding him carried out his policies, so for almost 
a quarter of a century Jefferson's ideals of demo- 
cractic government were supreme. 

His closing years were clouded by financial dif- 
ficulties, but to the last Monticello was a synonym 
for open-handed hospitality. His sister's family of 
six children had grown up with his own two chil- 
dren, and now his eldest daughter, Martha Ran- 
dolph, with her eleven children, ordered his house- 
hold. Visitors came from all over the world and 
none were turned away. A beef was eaten in two 
days! Yet he found time to carry out a cherished 
project — the founding of a great state university. 
For sixteen years this was his absorbing interest. 



62 AMERICAN LEADERS 

He drew the plans and made the working drafts of 
the buildings. He superintended the construction, 
until he was so weak that he had to be lifted to the 
back of his spirited horse. 

The third of July it was evident his strength was 
almost gone. But from time to time he roused 
himself to ask, "Is it yet the Fourth?" When at 
last his nurse answered "yes" he sighed happily 
and his face lit up with his familiar radiant smile. 
At noon, fifty years after the signing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, he slept, not again to awaken 
here. At sunset of the same day, in Quincy, Mass., 
his lifelong friend, John Adams, left this world. 
His last words were the question, "Thomas Jeffer- 
son still Uves?" Like worn-out vessels, "the two 
aged friends cast anchor side by side." 




Alexander Hamilton 



CHAPTER VII 

The Little Lion 

Nearly two hundred years ago a Scotch mer- 
chant, James Hamilton, came to picturesque Nevis, 
one of the islands of the West Indies. He married 
there Rachel Fawcett, a beautiful and very in- 
tellectual girl of Huguenot descent. To them was 
born, on January 11, 1757, a son, Alexander 
Hamilton. 

While he was yet a little child, his adored mother 
died and his father failed in business. His mother's 
relatives took charge of the boy, and until he was 
twelve years old he had a wonderful teacher, Dr. 
Knox, a Presbyterian clergyman. 

At that age, however, he had to go to work in the 
countinghouse of Nicholas Cruger. Of this work 
he wrote, "I contemn the groveling condition of a 
clerk to which my fortune condemns me." Yet 
he did his work so well and so faithfully that when 
Mr. Cruger went to New York on a business trip, 
he left Alexander, not yet fourteen years of age, in 
charge. 

About a year later, in 1772, the islands were 
visited by a terrific hurricane. Alexander furnished 
a newspaper with such a graphic description of this 

65 



66 AMERICAN LEADERS 

storm that his relatives, urged by Dr. Knox, raised 
money for his education and sent him to New York. 
He threw himself eagerly into his studies. Wrapped 
in a blanket in winter he studied until midnight. 
In summer dawn found him at work in a cemetery, 
where he would be undisturbed. In 1774 he was 
ready for college. 

Princeton refused him the privilege of taking the 
course in about one-half the usual time, so he en- 
tered Columbia — then King's College. He soon 
won a name as a student, debater, and friend. He 
was generous and unselfish, full of love for others; 
hence he won love for himself. 

July 6, 1774, a "great meeting in the fields" was 
held to draw together the patriots. Hamilton 
spoke so eloquently that the people went wild with 
enthusiasm. He knew war must come, so he ap- 
plied himself to the study of military matters. 
When in 1776 New York raised an artillery com- 
pany, Hamilton was placed in command. While 
drilling his troops he found time to study about 
money circulation, rates of exchange, commerce, 
taxes, etc. He knew that after the war there would 
be need of someone who understood these matters 
thoroughly. 

Meanwhile he did his work as captain so well 
that General Greene called him to his headquarters 
and introduced him to Washington. Later, during 



THE LITTLE LION 67 

the fighting on Harlem Heights, Washington saw- 
some work skilfully done by Hamilton. He invited 
the young officer to his tent. This was the begin- 
ning of a lifelong friendship. In 1777 he was 
given a place on Washington's staff, with the rank 
of lieutenant-colonel. He soon was known as the 
"Little Lion," because of his bravery and nobility. 
He looked like a mere boy, for he was short and 
slender, a "dark-eyed stripling, almost delicate in 
frame." 

He had many warm friends at this time, as al- 
ways throughout life. Some, among the famous 
men of the time, were Lafayette, Baron von 
Steuben, Laurens, and best of all, Washington. 
But the great attachment of his life was for Eliza- 
beth Schuyler, daughter of General Schuyler. De- 
cember 14, 1780, when Hamilton was just twenty- 
three, they were married. 

Throughout the war Hamilton took an active 
part. At the battle of Monmouth his horse was 
shot from under him. At Yorktown, at his own 
request, he led the final charge and captured the 
enemy's works. 

When the war was over he studied law. In four 
months he fitted himself for admission to the bar. 
At the age of twenty-five he was elected to Con- 
gress. He was a member of the convention which 
framed the Constitution of the United States, and 



68 AMERICAN LEADERS 

his treatise on this plan of government "always will 
be cited by all writers on constitutional law." 

When Washington was made President he chose 
Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury. 
In that office he addressed Congress with regard to 
providing for the public debt, the establishment of 
national banks, the founding of a mint, as well as 
many other matters scarcely second in importance 
to these. 

After six years of strenuous public life he resigned 
in 1795 to resume the practice of law in New York. 
He desired to devote himself to his home and his 
family. ''The Grange," his summer home on the 
Hudson, was especially dear to him. Here were his 
books, his loved classics, and the Bible, of which 
he said, "I can prove its truth as clearly as any 
proposition ever submitted to the mind of man." 

But he was not to enjoy a quiet home life. He 
found himself pitted in politics against Aaron Burr, 
whose fame as a lawyer was second only to his 
own. Unfortunately Burr's moral nature was far in- 
ferior to his intellectual gifts. He had failed in many, 
of his plans for public position ; he was a most am- 
bitious man and he laid the blame for these failures 
at Hamilton's door. When Burr's scheme to obtain 
the governorship of New York failed, in his angry 
disappointment he challenged Hamilton to a duel. 
Hamilton was opposed to dueling on moral and re- 



THE LITTLE LION 69 

ligious grounds, but felt forced by public prejudice 
to comply with the custom of the times. 

However, at the crucial moment he refused to 
fire. He fell, a sacrifice to the world's code of 
honor at that time, but he kept his own. His 
family was prostrated; his eldest daughter lost her 
reason. In an interval of relief from suffering he 
calmed his frenzied wife with the words, "Re- 
member, my Betty, you are a Christian." 

Thirty- four hours after the duel, on July 12, 1804, 
he died. The whole nation mourned for him. While 
old Trinity Church endures, his resting place, in 
plain view of one of New York's busiest streets, will 
be tenderly cherished. On the tomb is this in- 
scription : 

To the Memory of 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
The Corporation of Trinity Have Erected This 
Monument 
In Testimony of Their Respect 
For 
The Patriot of Incorruptible Integrity 
The Soldier of Approved Valour 
The Statesman of Consummate Wisdom 
Whose Talents And Virtues Will be Admired 
by 
Grateful Posterity 
Long After This Marble Shall Have Mouldered To Dust 
He Died July 12th 1804 Aged 47 




James Monroe 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Author of the Monroe Doctrine 

The man who left to America a document which 
ranks with the Declaration of Independence and 
the Constitution must have passed an uneventful 
childhood. This is concluded from the fact that, 
although he was born at Monroe's Creek, Va., 
April 28, 1758, history is silent as to his life until 
1776. Then it is recorded that James Monroe, 
with thirty other students and three teachers of 
William and Mary College, left the schoolroom for 
the battlefield. 

The young soldier must have given a good 
account of himself in the Continental Army, for it 
was as Lieutenant Monroe that he led the stirring 
charge of his company at Trenton. 

''Now, boys! Down with the Hessians! Show 
'em what they get for pestering Americans! Fol- 
low me! For the guns! Charge!" 

So it was that Monroe rushed a reinforced Hes- 
sian battery on a stone bridge. As the Hessians 
turned to run they fired, and Monroe's right arm 
dropped limp. From that moment he was to carry 
a bullet in his shoulder throughout the whole of 
his life, but he went on, his men after him. They 

73 



74 AMERICAN LEADERS 

captured the battery, they held the Hessians at 
bay, they repulsed a return charge, and finally, by 
killing the Hessian commander, they helped Wash- 
ington win the battle of Trenton. 

Monroe fought also at Brandywine, German- 
town, and Monmouth, advancing through the 
various army promotions to the rank of colonel. 
Home from war he came to enter upon a public 
career that was to last for forty- three years. In 
1782 he was elected to the Virginia Legislature. 
Well and faithfully he had fought, and with equal 
skill and sincerity he served his country as states- 
man, governor, senator, foreign minister. Secre- 
tary of State, Secretary of War, and President. 

Opinions may differ as to the soundness of his 
political views, but there is no dissenting voice 
when history speaks of James Monroe's clearness 
of judgment, wisdom, prudence, strength of char- 
acter, and purity of life. Thomas Jefferson, his 
lifelong friend and mentor, said, "James Monroe 
is a man whose soul might be turned wrongside 
outwards without revealing a blemish to the 
world." An old Virginia friend wrote, "Mr. Mon- 
roe, in his family, was not only unvaryingly kind and 
affectionate, but as gentle as a woman. He was 
wholly unselfish . . . and one of the most polite 
men to all ranks and classes I ever saw. During 
his two presidential terms, he appointed no rela- 



THE AUTHOR OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE 75 

tive or near connection to office, because he was 
not willing to lay himself liable to the suspicion of 
being influenced by any other consideration than 
the public good. He was warmly attached to his 
friends. Washington and Jefferson he greatly ad- 
mired, but James Madison he loved with all his 
heart." 

Nor does any student deny the value of the serv- 
ice he rendered in public life. Earliest in point 
of date was his journey to France as envoy, in 1803, 
to arrange with Napoleon Bonaparte the purchase 
and cession of Louisiana, "the largest transaction 
in real estate the world has ever known." Later, 
during the War of 1812, Monroe, the Secretary of 
State, was forced to act also as Secretary of War, 
and part of the time as Secretary of the Treasury as 
well. For ten days of this time he did not undress, 
and almost every hour he was in the saddle. Money 
was desperately needed, but the country's credit 
was gone. 

"If you have no confidence in the Government's 
securities," Monroe asked the cashier of the Bank 
of Columbia, "have you confidence in my honor?" 

"Most certainly I have confidence in your word 
of honor as a man," came the prompt reply. 

"Then," demanded Monroe, "accept my word of 
honor as a pledge. If you give me the money the 
Government must have, I will pledge my honor 



76 AMERICAN LEADERS 

and my private fortune that the loan will be 
repaid." 

So, like Robert Morris, James Monroe offered 
his all to his country. He did more. With the 
money thus advanced, he strengthened the de- 
fenses of Washington and Baltimore, he sent am- 
munition to Jackson at New Orleans. Even more, 
he forwarded decisive orders to Jackson, and to the 
Southern governors, and determined demands for 
troops. It was due as much to his energy as to 
Jackson's generalship that the halting, inefi&cient 
War of 1812 ended in a blaze of glory. 

His two administrations have always been known 
as ''the era of good feeling," for there was little 
party strife during those years. So little, in fact, 
that in 1820 he received every electoral vote but 
one. He was entitled to that one also, but the 
delegate who cast the. vote for Adams declared 
he did it because no man but Washington ever 
ought to have the honor of a unanimous choice. 
The adoption of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 
was the only real disturbance in the general quie- 
tude. Another outstanding event of this time was 
the visit of Lafayette to America and the warm 
welcome the country gave the old man, who, as a 
youth, had sacrificed a brilliant future to serve 
without pay in the patriot army. 

But the service which links James Monroe to 



THE AUTHOR OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE 77 

immortality was his enunciation of the doctrine 
known by his name. Spain's American colonies, 
one by one, had revolted from her cruel rule and 
the United States had recognized their independ- 
ence. But the Holy Alliance, made up of the gov- 
ernments of France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
proposed to put these colonies again under Spain's 
control. 

In 1823 James Monroe, in his annual message 
to Congress, embodied a clause, commonly re- 
garded "as an epitome of the principles of the 
United States with respect to the development of 
American States." Briefly, in speaking of the con- 
templated action by the Holy Alliance, this clause 
stated that we "should consider any attempt on 
their part to extend their system to any portion 
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
safety," adding, "The American continents, by 
the free and independent condition which they have 
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be 
considered as subjects for future colonization by 
any European powers." 

So James Monroe, as President of the United 
States, crystallized the thought of the republic 
from the days of its beginning. Washington, Jef- 
ferson, and John Quincy Adams had expressed the 
same thought in varying phrase. Indeed, when 
writing this message, Monroe consulted Jefferson, 



78 AMERICAN LEADERS 

who replied, ''Our first and fundamental maxim 
should be : Never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to 
intermeddle with cisatlantic affairs." 

In 1825 Monroe retired from office. But his 
public life had indelibly recorded his firm convic- 
tion that America is for Americans. Like Robert 
Morris, he died in poverty. But his closing years 
were not unhappy, since they were spent in the 
home of his daughter in New York City. Here, in 
1831, one year after his cherished and beautiful wife 
had entered the life beyond, he followed her. To 
him, as to Jefferson and to Adams, the end of life 
here came on the Fourth of July. New York hon- 
ored his passing, and he was laid to rest by the side 
of his wife. But in 1858 Virginia, wishing him to 
lie in his native soil, carried his ashes to Hollywood 
Cemetery, Richmond. 




John Jacob Astor 



CHAPTER IX 

The Monarch of the Fur Trade 

Dreams are not iridescent bubbles, beautiful, 
useless, fleeting. Daydreams are the visions that 
lure men from the plains of drudgery to the heights 
of achievement. True, while the eyes are fixed on 
their beauty, the feet must climb, the dreamer 
must surmount all obstacles, he must keep steadily 
on. Those who can do this are the true builders 
and the real conservers of democracy. 

Such was John Jacob Astor. He was born July 
17, 1763, in Waldorf, Germany, and his youth was 
one of hardship and poverty. The loss of his own 
mother and the coming into the home of a step- 
mother, who "loved not Jacob the father, nor John 
Jacob the son," added to his longing to leave the 
country village and make his own way in the great 
world outside. 

Even at fourteen years of age he had determined 
to go to the New World, but it was two years later 
before his father gave his consent for John Jacob 
to leave home. No one knew that John Jacob 
dreamed of America. Perhaps his father would 
not have yielded to John Jacob's wish had he known 
all that was in the boy's mind. 

81 



82 AMERICAN LEADERS 

By that time John Jacob was a strong, sturdy 
lad, of whom his Lutheran pastor wrote, "He has 
a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understand- 
ing, and a sound, youthful elbow grease and the 
wish to put it to good use." Further in compre- 
hension the good pastor did not go. He did not 
know that the boy left Waldorf with his eyes fixed 
on America. Yet, though John Jacob's head was 
in the clouds he kept his feet firmly on earth. He 
realized that before he could cross the sea he must 
achieve certain definite aims. First, he must earn 
and save money; second, he must learn the English 
language ; third, he must acquire all the knowledge 
possible about the country of his dreams. 

He set out early one summer morning on foot, 
with a bundle of clothes hung from a stick over one 
shoulder. He was bound for the river, a few miles 
distant, down which he meant to work his way on 
a raft to the nearest seaport. His friends watched 
him out of sight, and as the forest engulfed him his 
teacher said, "I am not afraid for John Jacob. 
He'll get through the world. He has a clear head 
and everything right behind the ears." 

John Jacob's heart swelled with the bigness of 
his undertaking, and before he reached the river he 
sat down under a tree and made three resolutions: 
"I will be honest; I will be industrious; I will not 
gamble." 



THE MONARCH OF THE FUR TRADE 83 

In London, in his uncle's factory for making 
musical instruments, where he found employment, 
he kept his promises to himself, and set himself 
resolutely to pass the milestones that lay between 
him and America. So well did he succeed that four 
years later he stepped on board a ship bound for 
the New World with the clothes on his back, a 
good suit in reserve, seven flutes for stock in trade, 
twenty-five dollars, and a steerage ticket. 

"There are no accidents." When almost at his 
destination the ship was icebound in Chesapeake 
Bay. Two months the passengers waited for the 
ice to break— ample time for John Jacob to learn 
from a fur trader on board all the ins and outs of 
the business. He asked many questions, and his 
new friend answered them all. By the time John 
Jacob Astor landed he knew how to trade with the 
Indians, how much to pay, where to buy, how to 
preserve, pack, and transport the peltries. He 
had learned also what price to ask and the names 
of the leading dealers in New York, Montreal, and 
London. 

Again John Jacob dreamed — but kept his feet 
on earth. After he had served an apprenticeship in 
the business, he would trade in furs. Straight to 
New York he went, where his brother, a butcher, 
welcomed him and offered him a place in the busi- 
ness. But John Jacob had his vision and he fol- 



84 AMERICAN LEADERS 

lowed it. He got a place in a fur store, where he 
kept his eyes and ears open. So rapidly did he 
learn that in a year he was sent through the wilder- 
ness as far as Montreal, to buy furs. He bargained 
well with the Indians, exchanging so advantage- 
ously for furs the trinkets he carried that he as- 
tonished his employer on his return by the number 
of skins he brought. 

One year more he served, then he took unto him- 
self a wife. Miss Sarah Todd, who was so interested 
in John Jacob's ambitions that she insisted that 
her dowry of three hundred dollars be used to set 
up a store of his own. Soon she knew as much 
about furs as her husband and was a match for 
him in business. She it was who managed the little 
shop when John Jacob went on long journeys into 
the wilderness, trading with the Indians. Return- 
ing, he would prepare the skins himself, often aided 
by his wife, who would come down from their little 
home above the store to work with him. "She 
was the best business partner any man ever had," 
John Jacob Astor often asserted in later years. 

It was Mrs. Astor who urged the first trip to 
London with furs. Mr. Astor went in the steerage 
class. He came home with a paper in his pocket, 
the gift of a fellow-German, which gave him his 
real start as a financier. This pass, given by the 
governor of the great East India House, entitled 



THE MONARCH OF THE FUR TRADE 85 

him to trade freely at any of the ports owned by 
the East India Company. It was a very valuable 
concession, as the company controlled all the ports 
of China. 

On his return he handed the paper to his wife 
saying, "But I have no ships, so it is no use to us 
at present." 

However, Mrs. Astor suggested that he see a 
friend in the East India trade and arrange with 
him to make the voyage, giving Mr. Astor half the 
profits in return for the use of the pass. James 
Livermore agreed to this plan, and when he re- 
turned the pass Mr. Astor's share of the profit was 
$55,000. At once he invested it in a sailing ship 
and so became America's pioneer merchant in the 
China trade — the best market in the world for furs. 
The cargoes of teas and silks and matting which 
were brought on the return voyages found a ready 
sale in the New World. 

Still John Jacob Astor daydreamed. He looked 
ahead for the city of his adoption, New York, 
though at that time Greenwich Village was two 
miles from the town. Every morning before seven 
Mr. Astor was at his store, but in the late after- 
noon he rode up and down Manhattan Island, 
dreaming as he rode. He looked on meadows and 
saw solid rocks of substantial buildings. So he 
bought land — sometimes on the edge of town. 



86 AMERICAN LEADERS 

where he built houses and with the rent bought 
more land far beyond the town's borders. He 
bought and built so wisely that years afterward 
seven thousand houses paid rent to the Astor estate. 

For his country as well as for his city this seer of 
visions dreamed dreams. He saw the frontier be- 
tween America and Canada guarded by forts as far 
as the country was then known — to the foot of 
Lake Michigan. He urged a survey from that point 
to the Pacific Ocean with forts to follow the line 
thus marked out. From the mouth of the Columbia 
River he foretold a line of American ships en route 
for Asia, using the Sandwich Islands as a halfway 
station. So clear was his vision of the day when 
this would be, that, at his own expense, he founded 
Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River. In 
Washington Irving's Astoria may be read the ro- 
mantic story of the expeditions which went, one 
by land and one by sea, to this unknown point on 
the western ocean. 

Had John Jacob Astor's instructions to his sub- 
ordinates been strictly followed, this vision, too, 
would have become a reality. But, through the 
dishonesty of one and the carelessness of others, 
Astoria and the Oregon fur trade fell into the hands 
of a rival British company and Mr. Astor lost the 
million dollars he had invested. So miscarried the 
plan which has been called "one of the grandest and 



THE MONARCH OF THE FUR TRADE 87 

most comprehensive ever framed by the mind of 
man. The spirit which John Jacob Astor showed 
was the spirit which has made America. The first 
American promoters, while seeking personal benefit, 
were moved by considerations of loyalty and pa- 
triotism equaled by business men in no other coun- 
try at any time." 

In 1820 John Jacob Astor visited Waldorf, the 
village he had left years before. He studied thor- 
oughly the need of this remote place, and the out- 
come was the Astorhaus, a home for the poor, the 
blind, and the deaf, as well as for the education of 
all poor children. In his will this home was gener- 
ously provided for. Provision was made also for 
all relatives, however far removed; but the bulk of 
the estate in accordance with Old-World custom 
was left to his oldest son, William B. Astor. 

It was fitting that a life spent in piling up oppor- 
tunity for those who were to follow him should 
close by giving the Astor Library to the city. At 
the time it was founded America numbered few 
writers, but John Jacob Astor foresaw the time 
when many should feel the need of books of refer- 
ence. This call of literary workers yet unborn 
sounded so clearly in Mr. Astor's ears that he sent 
Dr. Cogswell abroad to collect books that would 
lay the foundation for a cosmopolitan library of 
reference. 



88 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Meantime, through all the years of his busy life, 
he served as a member of the consistory of the Ger- 
man Reformed Church, and in his will he remem- 
bered generously this center of religious faith so 
dear to his heart. 

March 29, 1848, his life here ended. And yet it 
did not end, for "John Jacob Astor still lives in the 
paths he opened for those who came after him." 



M 




■ 9 




1 1 





Meriwether Lewis 



CHAPTER X 

The Pathfinders 

On May 14, 1804, forty men, one woman, and a 
baby, left the little town of St. Louis at the mouth 
of the Missouri River and struck out for the un- 
known West. Meriwether Lewis, private secre- 
tary to President Thomas Jefferson, and William 
Clark, a brother of George Rogers Clark, were in 
charge of the expedition. Lewis, who was born 
August 18, 1774, in Charlottesville, Va., had served 
in the army, helped to suppress the Whisky Insur- 
rection, and later served under Anthony Wayne 
against Indian attacks. Clark, who was born in 
Virginia, August 1, 1770, was an old comrade of 
Lewis', and he also had served under General 
Wayne. Both men from their experience were 
well fitted to undertake the tremendous task as- 
signed to them. 

In 1803 the United States Government had pur- 
chased from France for fifteen million dollars all 
the land lying between the Mississippi River and 
the Rocky Mountains. No one knew anything 
about this region, so Congress sent the party out 
to gather data for maps showing the mountains, 
rivers, and valleys; to note the kinds of soil, trees, 

91 



92 AMERICAN LEADERS 

fruit, animals, and minerals in the different parts 
of the country; and, most important of all, to make 
friends with the Indians and to open up the way 
for trading with them. 

For two years this little party journeyed through 
awe-inspiring mountains and across desert stretches. 
They went through the picturesque lands of Mon- 
tana where the earth is worn into such shapes that 
the explorers were sure they had come upon ancient 
forts. They met buffaloes so tame that they had 
to be driven away with sticks and stones. They en- 
countered bears — brown bears, black bears, and 
grizzly bears — not at all friendly, yet ready to greet 
them with a hug. Sometimes they marched over 
plains where the cactus thorns pierced their feet 
as if their shoes were only made of paper. Clouds 
of mosquitoes drove them nearly wild. Once Cap- 
tain Lewis awoke from a nap to find a big rattle- 
snake sleeping beside him. 

One night the company was camping on a sand- 
bar in a river. Hardly were they asleep when the 
guard called, "Get up! Quick! The sandbar's 
sinking!" 

And before they reached the shore the sandbar 
was out of sight. But the greatest hardship was 
that for two years they had no word from home. 
That was even harder than doing without food, as 
sometimes they were forced to do. 




William Clark 



THE PATHFINDERS 95 

All the way out to the Pacific Coast they made 
friends with the Indians, though to do so often de- 
manded much tact and forbearance. On the re- 
turn journey they were not so fortunate, for an 
encounter with the treacherous Blackfeet Indians 
left the latter bitter foes of the white men ever after. 

But the little band fulfilled nobly the task set for 
them. They followed the Missouri River to its 
source, a tiny stream where a man could stand with 
a foot on either bank. Three-fourths of a mile 
westward they came to another streamlet, one of 
the branches of the Columbia River. This they 
followed to the Pacific Ocean, arriving there in the 
rainy season. That winter their clothes and bed- 
ding were never dry and their main food was dried 
fish. 

As soon as spring came they started on the return 
journey. When in September, 1806, they reached 
the little village of St. Louis, they were welcomed 
as men returned from the dead. All hope of their 
return had been given up. The leaders and men 
of the exploring party were liberally rewarded. 
Besides receiving a tract of fifteen hundred acres, 
Lewis in 1807 was made governor of the northern 
part of the territory. Lewis, while on the way 
west to Washington, died October 11, 1809. Clark, 
after serving as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 
died September 1, 1838. 



96 AMERICAN LEADERS 

These men were pathfinders in the best sense, 
for they blazed the way for thousands of home- 
seekers. So long as men shall honor courage and 
persistence, the names of Lewis and Clark will be 
respected and revered. 

Nor will less honor be paid to John Charles Fre- 
mont, who did for the Rockies and CaUfornia what 
Lewis and Clark did for the Northwest. 

Fremont was born in Savannah, Ga., January 21, 
1813. Besides serving as instructor of mathematics 
in the navy for two and a half years, he was as- 
sistant engineer of a survey for a proposed railway. 
In 1838 he was appointed second lieutenant of 
topographical engineers of the army. He sur- 
veyed for the Government the land lying between 
the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri 
Rivers, and also the lower course of the Des 
Moines River. 

In 1842 the Government sent him from St. 
Louis with a band of picked men, guided by the 
famous scout. Kit Carson. As far as Fort Laramie 
the journey was easy, but west of that point trou- 
bles multiplied. Hostile Indians had to be placated. 
So well did Fremont succeed in doing this that he 
was invited to an Indian dogfeast. Though he 
longed to send regrets, he had to go and eat not 
only one but two bowls of dogstew. 

The Government was particularly anxious to 




John C. Fremont 



THE PATHFINDERS 99 

know the height of the peaks in the Rocky Moun- 
tains. So when Fremont's barometer was acci- 
dentally broken, he spent two days repairing it 
with glue made from buffalo hoofs and horn. As a 
result of this patient work he was able to estimate 
the height of the peak — since known as Fremont's 
Peak — then regarded as the highest peak in all 
the Rockies. There on the topmost rock, 13,790 
feet above sea level, they raised the flag August 16, 
1842. 

In 1843 Fremont was sent West again to see 
whether a good road to the Pacific could be opened. 
This time he pushed on to the Great Salt Lake, 
about which little had been known. 

A third time he went out, in 1845, to explore the 
Great Basin and the Pacific Coast, and to gain 
California in view of the possibility of war between 
Mexico and the United States. When he was near 
Oregon two white men halted his party. They car- 
ried dispatches from Washington, telling that war 
had been declared between the United States and 
Mexico. Fremont at once turned to the help of 
California. Americans from all over the state came 
to join his army, and by 1847 the conquest of Cali- 
fornia was completed. 

Fremont was made governor of California and 
Kit Carson went back to Washington to tell the 
story. But Fremont's forces were so reduced that 



100 AMERICAN LEADERS 

the Mexicans crept back. Had not General Kear- 
ney returned in time with Kit Carson, CaHfornia 
might have been lost to the Union. Later the time 
came when the Mexican general surrendered all 
his arms and his men. So California, an empire of 
gold, was secured for the Union. 

In 1856 Colonel Fremont was the first Republi- 
can candidate for the Presidency, but was defeated 
by James Buchanan. After serving as governor of 
Arizona from 1878 to 1881 he was put on the re- 
tired list by Act of Congress. He died in New York 
City, July 13, 1890. His story, like that of Lewis 
and Clark, is one of the wonder tales of American 
history. 




Henry Clay 



CHAPTER XI 

The Mill Boy of the Slashes 

"The Slashes" are low, swampy lands, and the 
"mill boy" was Henry Clay, born in Hanover 
County, Virginia, April 12, 1777. His father, a 
Baptist minister, died when Henry was but four 
years old. His mother was left to bring up a 
family of eight, and very soon Henry began to 
help by taking the corn to the mill. The neighbors 
nicknamed him "the mill boy of the slashes," and 
the name clung to him all his life. Perhaps this 
was because to every man who knew the meaning 
.of toil it typified Henry Clay's early acquaintance 
with poverty and hard work. 

When he was fourteen his mother married again 
and the family moved to Richmond. Captain 
Watkins, a real father to his wife's children, placed 
Henry in the Chancery Clerk's office. The clerk as- 
. serted that there was no vacancy. "Never mind," 
came Captain Watkins' prompt reply, "you must 
take the boy." 

In a new suit of gray "figinny" made by his 

mother, the tall, awkward boy went to work. At 

first many sly grins were exchanged behind his back 

by the other clerks, but they were not long-lived, 

103 



104 AMERICAN LEADERS 

for the innate power of the boy quickly made itself 
felt. It attracted the attention of Chancellor 
Wyeth and he appropriated the fifteen-year-old boy 
for his private secretary. He soon felt a real affec- 
tion for him. When he found that the lad did not 
seek amusement in the evening but studied in- 
stead, he laid out a course of reading for him; first 
in English, later in history and in law. Naturally 
Henry Clay determined that he would become a 
lawyer. 

By the time he was twenty he had achieved this 
goal. As there seemed Httle chance for him in 
Richmond he followed his parents, who had moved 
to Lexington, Ky. Before long he had a large 
practice. He was unusually successful, whether de- 
fending a criminal, or settling some civil dispute. 

At twenty-two he married Lucretia Hart, and as 
soon as he had the means he bought Ashland, a 
country estate near Lexington. It was an ideal 
Southern home, the big brick mansion set far back 
from the highway, in a grove of trees, with great 
flower and vegetable gardens in the rear. Six 
daughters and five sons grew up in this home, and 
here in later days were entertained Lafayette, 
Webster, Monroe, and other famous men from both 
America and Europe. 

When, in 1799, Kentucky considered a project 
for gradually abolishing slavery, Henry Clay wrote 



THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES 105 

and spoke earnestly in favor of it. He felt then as 
he later affirmed, "I had rather be right than be 
President." 

In 1807, before he was thirty, he was sent to the 
United States Senate to fill an unexpired term, as 
he was also in 1810. In 1811 he became a member 
of the House of Representatives. To him fell an 
honor never before bestowed on a new member, 
that of being chosen Speaker on the first day he 
took his seat. For seven successive terms he served 
in this chair. "Henry Clay stands in the tradition 
of the House of Representatives as the greatest of 
its speakers. His perfect mastery of parliamentary 
law, his unfailing presence of mind, the courteous 
dignity of his bearing, are remembered as un- 
equaled." So wrote Carl Schurz. 

He used his great influence to bring on the War 
of 1812. For he held firmly that a sailor should be 
protected by his country; if not by peaceable means 
then by force. Hotly, in Congress, he urged action. 
"In such a cause, with the aid of Providence, we 
must come out crowned with success; but if we 
fail, let us fail like men; lash ourselves to our gal- 
lant tars, and expire together in one common 
struggle, fighting for seamen's rights." 

He was one of the five commissioners sent to 
Ghent, in 1814, to arrange a treaty of peace. So 
wisely did he bear himself in this council that he 



106 AMERICAN LEADERS 

returned home famous. Of him a friend said, "He 
is commanding in presence, a man who makes 
friends everywhere; always a gentleman, because 
always kind at heart." His voice was most mu- 
sical, his handclasp unfailingly cordial, and his 
memory of names and faces without a flaw. Add 
to these characteristics generosity and good humor, 
and it is small wonder his personal magnetism made 
him the leader of an admiring host. By his 
speeches, read everywhere, he moulded the polit- 
ical opinions of thousands. 

Little by Uttle the differences in business inter- 
ests between the North and the South led to an 
ever-growing difference of opinion with regard to 
slavery. Each section wanted as many states as 
possible on its own side in order to increase the 
number of votes in Congress. When Missouri was 
asked to enter the Union as a slave state, debate 
raged furiously. It was Henry Clay who proposed 
the compromise, adopted in 1820, which for a time 
postponed the threatening calamity. It won for 
Clay the name of the "great pacificator," and made 
him one of the great trio then in Washington: 
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. 

From 1825 to 1829 Henry Clay served as Sec- 
retary of State under John Quincy Adams, the 
"accidental President." Three times Clay was 
nominated for the Presidency and defeated. The 



THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES 107 

last time, in 1844, he was unanimously nominated 
by the Whig party and his election seemed certain. 
But the Whigs were afraid to come out boldly 
against slavery, and the Abolitionists so split the 
Whig vote that the election went to the Democrats. 
Henry Clay was keenly disappointed and his feel- 
ing was shared by thousands. Letters by the hun- 
dred poured into Ashland, and in some sections of 
the country business was forgotten as the people 
talked together of ''the blow that has fallen on our 
country." 

Financial trouble added to his cares, but friends 
canceled the mortgage of $50,000 on Ashland. 
"Had ever any man such friends or enemies as 
Henry Clay?" 

At seventy years of age, with a multitude of his 
friends and several of his dearly loved children 
gone from life here, Henry Clay's thoughts turned 
to the life to come. At Ashland he was baptized 
into the communion of the Episcopal Church. "On 
one side of the room hung a picture of Washington, 
an Episcopalian by birth and a devout communi- 
cant; immediately opposite, on a stand, stood the 
bust of William Henry Harrison, who was to have 
been confirmed in the church the Sabbath after he 
died. Fit witnesses of the scene!" 

In 1849, seven years after Henry Clay had said 
farewell to the Senate, he was again unanimously 



108 AMERICAN LEADERS 

chosen for a term of six years. Again he was called 
to debate and to compromise. The "Missouri Com- 
promise" of 1820 had kept the country quiet on 
the slavery question until the close of the Mexican 
War, in 1848. The winning of this war brought in 
New Mexico and California. When the latter 
asked to be admitted to the Union the question of 
slavery was again bitterly discussed, because at 
that time the number of free and slave states was 
equal. Clay introduced his "Compromise of 1850," 
or the "Omnibus Bill." As he walked up to the 
Capitol to make his last great speech upon the 
measure, he said to the friend by his side, "Will you 
lend me your arm? I feel weak and exhausted this 
morning." 

"Can you not postpone your speech?" his friend 
asked. 

"I consider our country in danger," Clay an- 
swered gravely. "If, in any measure, I can avert 
that danger, my health and my life are of little 
consequence." 

He spoke for two days! Among those who 
listened were many who had come from Phila- 
delphia, New York, and Boston to hear his argu- 
ment. But the measure was debated for six months 
longer. Clay was so ill that he could scarcely 
walk, but each day found him in his seat in the 
Senate chamber. Finally Webster, on the seventh 



THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES 109 

of March, 1850, employed his eloquence on behalf 
of the bill and it was adopted. This speech, which 
won temporarily the peace for which Clay labored, 
lost Webster his own prestige. 

Soon the North began to resist by force this bill 
because of the stringent fugitive slave law which 
grew out of it. Heartbroken by his failure to bring 
about a lasting peace, Henry Clay daily grew 
feebler. 

Quietly the end came June 29, 1852. From Wash- 
ington the funeral train passed through Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleve- 
land, and Cincinnati to Lexington. In each place, 
thousands gathered to do him honor and to mourn 
their own loss. At Ashland, before the flower- 
decked bier on the lawn, rich and poor, black and 
white, bowed in grief together. Henry Clay had 
not won the Presidency of the nation, but he had 
won that which was infinitely more precious, its 
heartfelt love. 




Daniel Webster 



CHAPTER XII 

The Great Expounder of the Constitution 

January 18, 1782, a slight, delicate boy was 
born to Ebenezer and Abigail Webster, in the 
little town of Salisbury, N. H. The baby's frailty 
won him his mother's special tenderness and 
later his father's secret resolve to send the boy to 
college. 

"I do not remember when or by whom I was 
taught to read, because I cannot recall a time 
when I could not read the Bible." So Daniel 
Webster wrote late in life. But it is a matter of 
record that he was only eight years old when, with 
the savings of months, he bought a cotton pocket 
handkerchief, on whose two sides was printed the 
Constitution of the United States. Years after- 
ward he said, "There is not an article, a section, a 
phrase, a word, a syllable, or even a comma of 
that Constitution that I did not study and ponder 
in every relation and in every construction of which 
it was susceptible." 

At twelve years of age by some means he got 

hold of Don Quixote. *T began to read it, and it is 

literally true I never closed my eyes until I had 

finished it, so great was the power of that extra- 

113 



114 AMERICAN LEADERS 

ordinary book on my imagination." The Spec- 
tator and Pope's Essay on Man furnished most of 
his other reading. ''We had so few books that we 
thought they were all to be got by heart." Later 
in life Milton, Shakespeare, and the Bible were his 
inspiration. Once Daniel Webster confided to an 
old friend, "I have read through the entire Bible 
many times. ... I pity the man who cannot 
find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for 
conduct." 

During the year 1 794 Daniel had nine months in 
Phillips Exeter Academy, where he made great 
progress in everything but declamation. He would 
go to this class perfectly prepared, but when his 
name was called bashfulness held him in his seat! 
At fifteen he entered Dartmouth College. Here his 
power as an orator began to make itself known. 
A classmate said of him, "In his movements, 
he was rather slow and deliberate — except when 
his feelings were aroused, then his whole soul 
would kindle into a flame. . . . No one ever 
thought of equaling the vigor and flow of his 
eloquence." 

He specialized in history and politics, and what 
he read became his own. "Often I closed my book 
and recalled what I had read. Then, afterward, if 
any subject came up on which I had read I could 
talk easily." No wonder Daniel Webster's fame 



GREAT EXPOUNDER OF THE CONSTITUTION 115 

as an interesting talker grew. Before he was one 
year in college he had won the fight against shyness 
and knew the thrill of mastering an audience by 
the power of the spoken word. From this time on 
his wonderful skill in debate grew until it com- 
manded the ear of the nation. 

After graduating in 1801 he taught school by 
day, copied deeds at night, and studied law be- 
tween times. Of him at this time George Ticknor 
Curtis says, "He was greatly belgved. I never 
heard him use a profane word, and never saw him 
lose his temper." 

In 1805 he was admitted to the bar, and in 1808 
he married a girl of extraordinarily beautiful char- 
acter, Grace Fletcher. They settled in Ports- 
mouth, and from there he was elected to the 
House. He took his seat May, 1813, among such 
noted statesmen as Henry Clay and John C. Cal- 
houn. To the Southern leaders Webster was often 
opposed on the great questions of the day. His 
skill in debating won him the first place among 
American orators. His oration at Plymouth, in 
1820, on the second centennial of the landing of the 
Pilgrims, was a masterpiece of eloquence. John 
Adams wrote to him, 'Tf there be an American who 
can read it without tears, I am not that American. 
... It ought to be read at the end of every year, 
forever and ever." 



116 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Coupled in the thoughts of men with this 
speech is his first Bunker Hill oration, though it 
was delivered five years later. He spoke to the 
survivors of the Revolution. ''You are now where 
you stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your 
brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, 
in strife for your country. Behold, how altered! 
. . . Now all is peace. God has allowed you to 
behold and to partake of the reward of your pa- 
triotic toils, and he has allowed us to meet you 
here, and in the name of the present generation, in 
the name of your country, in the name of liberty, 
to thank you." 

In 1824 he bought eighteen hundred acres of 
land at Marshfield, on the Massachusetts coast. 
Here he built a home that was the pride and joy 
of his life. Especially did he find relaxation in 
planting trees, setting out shrubs, and laying out 
beds of perennial flowers. His own course he urged 
on others, saying, "Plant trees, adorn your ground, 
live for the benefit of those who shall come after 
you." 

In 1828 a tariff bill was passed which divided the 
North and the South. Two years later Senator 
Hayne, of South Carolina, made a bitter attack on 
the bill and on Webster. In conclusion he stated 
the Southern doctrine that any state had the right 
to disobey the law of the nation. 



GREAT EXPOUNDER OF THE CONSTITUTION 117 

In one night Webster prepared his answer. To 
hear it the Senate Chamber was packed. His 
theme was nationality, and for four hours he held 
the audience spellbound by his logical appeal for 
the Union first and the State second. His lifelong 
study of the Constitution stood him in good stead. 
He made Americans realize as never before the 
value and sacredness of union. His closing words, 
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in- 
separable," became the inspiration of schoolboys 
over all the land. As boys, they declaimed this 
climax with the thrilling sentences that led up to 
it; later, as men, they fought to show their loyalty 
to the truth so eloquently expressed. 

Webster had made many stirring speeches be- 
fore, he made many later; but this "Reply to 
Hayne" capped the climax of his career. To the 
ringing words was added the magnetism of the 
man. He was almost six feet tall, with a large, 
well-shaped head, and deep-set eyes, black and 
glowing. His voice was wonderful — low and 
musical when talking, but in debate sonorous, the 
high tones sounding like a clarion, the low ones 
rumbling like those of an organ. 

From this date the lure of the Presidency was 
ever held before Daniel Webster, but time and 
again a more "available" candidate was chosen. 
In 1841 President Harrison appointed Webster 



118 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Secretary of State. After Harrison's death, when 
Tyler became President, the entire Cabinet, except 
Webster, resigned. He stayed to conclude the 
negotiations that were being made with Great 
Britain at that time, and then he, too, left public 
life and retired to Marshfield. But very shortly 
Massachusetts returned him to the Senate, and in 
1852 his attitude on the Clay "Compromise of 
1850" lost him the nomination for the Presidency, 
the last time his name could be so mentioned. 

One term of this compromise called for the en- 
forcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, which or- 
dered all escaped slaves found in the North to be 
returned to their owners. Though Daniel Webster 
had been a lifelong foe of slavery, he favored this 
bill. His friends were shocked and disappointed, 
but today he is less harshly judged. He loved the 
Union and he desired above all else to avert civif 
war. Of his own actions he said, ''I cared for noth- 
ing, but I meant to do my duty." 

After this last disappointment he retired to his 
beloved Marshfield. For nine miles before he en- 
tered its gates friends scattered flowers before his 
carriage. He entered its doors and sank into an 
easy chair, murmuring, "I am so thankful to be 
here. If I could have my will, never again would 
I leave this home!" Nor did he. The sands of 
life swiftly ran their course, and on October 24, 



GREAT EXPOUNDER OF THE CONSTITUTION 119 

1852, the end came. A few hours before he whis- 
pered, "My wish has been to do my Maker's will. 
I thank him now for all the mercies that surround 
me." 




Sam Houston 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Liberator of Texas 

Near Lexington, Va., March 2, 1793, was born a 
boy destined to be the governor of two states, the 
president of a republic five times as large as Eng- 
land, and a Senator of the United States. This boy, 
Sam Houston, got some schooling at the ''Old Field 
School." The course was made up of the "three 
R's," with but the rudiments of the third "R"— 
'rithmetic. 

But he read incessantly. Much of Pope's trans- 
lation of the Iliad he learned by heart. The Bible, 
Pilgrim's Progress^ and Shakespeare's works were 
the only other books in this frontier library. Years 
later, when commander in chief of the Texan 
forces, he studied Caserns Commentaries — in trans- 
lation, of course. Late in life he became a great 
student of the Bible. 

After the death of Sam's father, a veteran of the 
Revolution, in 1806, his mother migrated to Ten- 
nessee with her nine children. Sam was placed in a 
trader's store when he was about fifteen, but he 
ran away eight miles to the Cherokee Indians. 
Here he was adopted and given the name of 
Coloneh, "the rover." The Cherokees were a 
123 



124 AMERICAN LEADERS 

superior tribe who lived in log cabins, tilled the 
fields, and held many slaves. They had a written 
language, devised by their chief, Sequoia, for whom 
the giant trees of California are named. 

When Sam's family begged him to return he re- 
plied, "1 would rather measure deer tracks than 
measure tape." So he lived with the Cherokees 
until he enlisted for the War of 1812. In the army 
he rose rapidly. Under Andrew Jackson, at the 
famous fight of Tohopeka, he received a wound 
which troubled him all his life. His heroism in this 
battle is one of the most thrilling stories of border 
warfare and won for him the rank of second 
lieutenant. 

For nearly five years he served in the army. 
When he resigned in 1818 he held the rank of first 
lieutenant. Until his election to the House of 
Representatives in 1823 he studied and practiced 
law. He returned to Tennessee as governor in 1827. 
Colonel Claiborne, who as a little boy saw him in- 
augurated, says, "He wore a tall, bell-crowned, 
shining, black beaver hat; shining black patent- 
leather military stock incased by a standing collar; 
ruffled shirt; black satin vest; black silk trousers 
gathered to the waistband, with legs full; and a 
gorgeous, many-colored Indian hunting-shirt, fas- 
tened at the waist by a huge, red-beaded sash; 
embroidered silk stockings; and pumps with large 



THE LIBERATOR OF TEXAS 125 

silver buckles." All his life he wore striking cos- 
tumes like this. But his great height — six feet, 
three inches — and his imposing carriage kept them 
from seeming ridiculous. 

In 1829 he married Eliza Allen, but three months 
later, because of domestic unhappiness, he resigned 
as governor and left the state. He turned to his 
Indian father, who then lived in what is now Okla- 
homa. Here Houston lived for three years. 

In 1832 President Jackson sent him to Texas 
with a commission to the Indians there, to nego- 
tiate treaties with them for the protection of 
American traders on the border. In two months 
Houston traveled on horseback more than one 
thousand miles. His mission fulfilled, he remained 
in Texas to cast his lot with the Americans there 
- — the men called "the glory of the race of rangers." 

Repeated acts of injustice on the part of the 
Mexican government led the Americans in Texas to 
seek separation from Mexico. This the Mexican 
government refused; the Texans, in March, 1836, 
adopted a constitution and made Sam Houston 
head of the army. But before he took charge, the 
Alamo fell and the inhuman massacre at Goliad 
took place. The heroes of both battles were 
avenged, however, by Houston at the battle of 
San Jacinto, April 21, 1836. There he trapped 
and captured Santa Anna, and routed his forces. 



126 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Thus was Texas freed forever from Spanish domi- 
nation. 

Sam Houston was elected president of the new 
republic and served until 1844. In 1845 Texas 
came into the Union, and the following year she 
sent her hero to the United States Senate. Here 
he served two terms. In the Senate he was noted 
for his sturdy common sense — and his continual 
whittling. 

In 1840 he had married again, a noble Christian 
woman. He joined the Baptist church and while 
in Washington was a faithful attendant. During 
the services he whittled out little toys with his 
jackknife, but he also listened to the sermon. He 
was as thorough a Christian as he had been a fighter. 

In 1859 Houston was elected governor of Texas. 
He tried to keep Texas from seceding, saying, 'T 
tell you that, while I believe with you in the doc- 
trine of States' Rights, the North is determined to 
preserve this Union." But Texas seceded. In 1861 
Houston was called upon to take a new oath swear- 
ing allegiance to the Confederate government. 
This he refused to do, saying, "Not that I love 
Texas less, but I love her more as a state of the old 
Union than a state of the new Confederacy." This 
action, of course, cost him his office. 

Yet he did not want to see his state coerced. 
So he declined Lincoln's offer to make him a 



THE LIBERATOR OF TEXAS 127 

major-general in the Union army. At the same 
time he disdained the Confederate regulation of the 
state. All men over sixteen were required to regis- 
ter and obtain a pass. Houston did neither, and 
when halted by an officer he merely snapped, 
"San Jacinto is my pass through Texas." 

His last speech, full of his characteristic humor 
and dramatic sense, was on March 18, 1863. He 
spoke in the city named for him. Four months 
later, July 26, he quietly passed away. 

"Few men have been so written about, and few 
have deserved it more." 




William Lloyd Garrison 



CHAPTER XIV 

A Friend of the Friendless 

Not that the boy born December 10, 1805, in 
Newburyport, Mass., began life with such an un- 
selfish aim as a "friend of the friendless." To earn 
bread and butter was the big thought of William 
Lloyd Garrison's early years. His mother had to 
eke out the scanty income of a sea captain's wife by 
nursing. So she placed William, at the age of 
seven, in a home where by doing chores he could 
earn his board. 

When nine years old he was bound out to learn 
shoemaking. But he did not like this work, nor 
was he happy until he became an apprentice to a 
printer. From printing to writing political articles 
for print was but a step for the ambitious boy. 
Some of these writings were published anony- 
mously and won flattering attention. When Gar- 
rison was only twenty-one he started a newspaper 
of his own, but for want of capital the undertaking 
failed. 

He worked as editor for various reform papers, 
but his real work did not begin until 1829. That 
year a mild but most earnest Quaker, Benjamin 
Lundy, traveled on foot from Boston to Benning- 

131 



132 AMERICAN LEADERS 

ton, Vt., to persuade Garrison to go to Baltimore 
as joint editor of his paper, The Genius of Uni- 
versal Emancipation. 

Garrison went. He made the little paper a 
power in the land. He demanded immediate and 
unconditional emancipation of the slaves. He de- 
nounced slaveholders and slavedealers. Slave pens 
stood on Baltimore's principal streets and every 
week Garrison told in the Genius of some of the 
horrors he himself had witnessed. He was sued for 
libel. A slaveholding court found him guilty and 
fined him fifty dollars. But as he had no money 
to pay the fine, he had to go to jail. John Green- 
leaf Whittier visited him there and wrote a letter 
to Henry Clay, urging him to free ''the guiltless 
prisoner." Clay, although a slaveholder, responded 
favorably, but Arthur Tappan, a prominent New 
York merchant, paid the fine at once. 

This interference with the freedom of the press 
aroused the country. Yet when Garrison started 
out to give the lectures on slavery which he had 
prepared in prison, no public hall, not even one 
church, opened its doors to him ! But Garrison was 
not to be silenced. Again he started a paper. The 
Liberator came out in Boston, January 1, 1831, and 
never ceased fighting until every slave was free. 

That, however, was many years later. To keep 
the paper going for its first year, Garrison and his 



THE FRIEND OF THE FRIENDLESS 133 

partner, Isaac Knapp, lived on bread and water 
and did all the work on the paper in the evening 
after working all day elsewhere. Later some 
Abolitionists furnished a little money so that Gar- 
rison could give all his time to the paper. In the 
opening number he promised, "I will be as harsh 
as truth. On this subject, I do not wish to think 
or speak or write with moderation. I am in earnest 
— I will be heard." 

And heard he was. He denounced slavery as a 
sin and said every Christian should fight it with his 
might. At such teaching the North was almost as 
indignant as the South. A grand jury of North 
Carolina indicted him, and Georgia offered a re- 
ward of five thousand dollars to anyone who would 
bring him to that state and convict him. But his 
paper did exercise a mighty influence and survived 
to record Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation, 
and the amendment to the Constitution which for- 
ever prohibited slavery. 

Meantime Garrison organized in New England 
an antislavery society and so brought a mob about 
the Liberator office. In fact mobs sprang up wher- 
ever he went. But in Philadelphia, December, 
1833, delegates from eleven states met and organized 
the American Anti-Slavery Society, with John 
Greenleaf Whittier as secretary. 

Yet rioting went on. Both in New York and 



134 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Philadelphia disgraceful scenes were enacted. 
Conservative Boston staged the worst riot of all; 
the worst because the mob was made up of ''most 
respectable" people. They broke in upon a meet- 
ing of the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society while its 
leader was praying. Garrison was seized and 
dragged through the streets with a rope about his 
neck. With great difficulty the mayor rescued him 
and sent him to the safest place he could think of 
— the jail! 

In 1840 Garrison was sent to England to attend 
the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. But as 
women delegates, such as Lucretia Mott and Eliza- 
beth Cady Stanton, from the United States, were 
refused admission. Garrison refused to enter. He 
took this action because he felt such injustice 
should not pass without protest. 

Meanwhile the Liberator steadily sent forth its 
message. When the Civil War came it both de- 
manded and appealed for freedom for the slave. 
After emancipation was decreed it staunchly sup- 
ported Lincoln. In 1843 Garrison was elected 
president of the American Anti-Slavery Society 
and held this office until 1865. In April of that 
year he was one of the party who went to Charles- 
ton to raise the Union flag over the ruins of Fort 
Sumter. The colored people, nearly wild with 
joy, greeted him with an address of welcome by 



THE FRIEND OF THE FRIENDLESS 135 

a liberated slave. Garrison made reply, "Not unto 
us, but unto God be all the glory. Thank God this 
day that you are free.'' 

On this trip he stood in thoughtful silence by 
the grave of John C. Calhoun, who had as sincerely 
and strongly advocated slavery as Garrison had 
opposed it. Both had helped to bring about the 
war which abolished slavery forever. The same 
year the last number of the Liberator was printed. 
Its work was done, its mission fulfilled. 

In 1867 Garrison was entertained in England by 
such distinguished personages as the Duke and 
Duchess of Argyle, John Bright, John Stuart Mill, 
Herbert Spencer, and Prof. Huxley. On his return 
his own countrymen and friends, among them 
Sumner, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Greeley, 
gave him thirty thousand dollars in recognition of 
his work. 

He spent the rest of his life working for temper- 
ance and woman suffrage. Quietly and peace- 
fully his days on this earth ended May 24, 1879. 
About his bed, in his daughter's home in New York 
City, stood his children singing the hymn he asked 
for, "Rise, My Soul, and Stretch Thy Wings." 
Four days later, as the sun was setting, his body 
was laid at rest in Forest Hills, while a quartette 
of colored men sang softly, "I Cannot Always 
Trace the Way." 




Abraham Lincoln 



CHAPTER XV 

The Man of the People 

Hunger and hardship, penury and pain, 
Waylaid his youth and wrestled for his life. 

When Abraham Lincoln opened his eyes on this 
world, February 12, 1809, it was in the humblest of 
log cabins. The little home stood on the banks of 
Nolin's Creek, near Hodgensville, fifty miles south 
of Louisville, Ky. 

His father never learned that the secret of suc- 
cess lies within, but to the end of his days he 
fancied fortune beckoned him to a new environ- 
ment. So this honest, good-hearted, inefficient man 
dragged his two children and brave, frail wife from 
place to place, but never to a better home. In- 
deed, when they moved to Indiana, in 1816, after 
cutting their own way through the wilderness they 
had to spend the first winter in a half-faced camp 
— a rude shelter enclosed on three sides by logs and 
open on the fourth to a great fire kept burning 
night and day. Log slabs formed the table, log 
ends served as chairs, and the beds were heaps of 
leaves. Poor Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's mother, 
tried hard to make a home. She had little educa- 
tion, but using as a textbook the only book in the 
139 



140 AMERICAN LEADERS 

house, the Bible, she taught her children all she 
knew. Better still, she gave them her own intense 
craving for knowledge, her own longing for a wider 
outlook on life. When, worn out, she quit the 
struggle for existence, Lincoln, a boy of ten, was 
crushed with sorrow. 

He had loved his mother almost to the point 
of worship, and without her companionship and 
sympathy the rude cabin was desolate. He knew 
books could be friends. So this ragged, forlorn little 
boy borrowed every book in the region. There 
were not many — only Pilgrim's Progress, yEsop's 
Fables, and Robinson Crusoe. 

Meantime, shiftless Thomas Lincoln was like 
a ship without a rudder. Fortunately, Mrs. John- 
ston, a widow with three children, consented to 
marry the helpless man. With her came into the 
little cabin unwonted luxuries: real beds to replace 
the bags filled with cornhusks, a bureau, a clothes- 
press, a table, and chairs; and, vastly more im- 
portant to the lonely children, she brought love 
and understanding. Sarah lived to return her love 
only three years, but Lincoln was always her loyal, 
faithful son. 

What wonder, since, as she herself said, **His 
mind and mine — what little I had — always seemed 
to run together." She was proud of his love for 
reading, and when at night he built up the fire 



THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 141 

to read by she persuaded his father ''not to disturb 
him till he quit of his own accord." So he kept on 
borrowing every book within a radius of fifty 
miles. With his turkey-buzzard pen and his briar- 
wood ink, he copied many favorite bits; others he 
committed to memory. All he turned over and 
over in his mind and recast into words of his own. 
Weems' Life of Washington, a life of Benjamin 
Franklin, and Plutarch's Lives shaped within him 
a vision of the possibilities of a man. Later in Hfe 
Shakespeare and Burns became daily companions. 

But neither books nor dreams kept him from ful- 
filling well his daily tasks. He could "outlift, out- 
work, and outwrestle" anyone in the country. "He 
could sink an ax deeper into the wood than any 
other man I ever saw," said one friend. 

The twenty-first year of this strong young giant, 
who stood six feet, four inches in his stocking feet, 
was an eventful one. In company with two other 
families Thomas Lincoln made another move, this 
time to Illinois. Lincoln helped build the new 
house, then went out into the world for himself. 
He worked at whatever his hands found to do. 
Among other things he ran a flatboat down the 
Mississippi River to New Orleans. He found no 
charm in this, the first city he had ever seen. In- 
stead, the slave market with its "negroes in chains 
— ^whipped and scourged" made him exclaim, 



142 AMERICAN LEADERS 

"Boys, let's get away from this! If ever I get a 
chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard!" 

Back in Illinois he clerked in a store, winning the 
sobriquet of "Honest Abe" because of his rigid 
honor in weighing, and making change. Later he 
served as postmaster, as surveyor, as partner in a 
grocery store. And all the time he studied; not a 
moment was wasted. At the bottom of a barrel of 
old books that came to the store he found a copy 
of Blackstone's Commentaries. Eagerly he set out 
to master its contents. Meantime he began his 
political career by speaking on the questions of the 
day wherever men came together: in the fields, in 
the schoolhouse, in the town square. For three 
terms he was sent to the Illinois Legislature ; then 
he settled in Springfield to practice law. Five 
years later he married, and the modest white 
frame house where his boys were born still opens its 
doors to his friends. 

Time passed. The whole country was rent with 
discussion over the extension of slavery and the 
question of states' rights. In 1858 Abraham 
Lincoln was the Republican party's candidate for 
the United States Senate. Stephen A. Douglas 
was the candidate of the Democrats. In seven de- 
bates these two men faced each other, and Lincoln 
won the people by his forcible setting forth of the 
truth rooted in his heart: "A house divided against 



THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 143 

itself cannot stand." "Lincoln won a victory for 
his cause and for his party, but not for himself." 
By a small majority Douglas was returned to the 
Senate, 

The debates, however, destroyed Douglas' hope 
of being a Presidential candidate, while two years 
later Lincoln was elected to this, the highest office 
in the land. 

Lincoln said good-by to Springfield on a cold, 
rainy February morning. From the car platform 
he said to the drenched crowd gathered to bid him 
Godspeed: "Without the assistance of that Divine 
Being who ever attended Washington, I cannot 
succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. 
Trusting in him who can go with me, and remain 
with you, and be everywhere for good, let us con- 
fidently hope all will yet be well." 

So he took up the burden of piloting the ship of 
state while it shook with turmoil and strife. He 
never spoke of the Civil War as "The Rebellion" 
but as "This Great Trouble." Visiting a hospital 
he was told by his escort, "Mr. President, you'll not 
want to go in these three wards. They're only 
Rebels." 

"You mean Confederates, Southern gentlemen," 
came the quick reply. And he greeted each one 
with the same cordiality he had shown to the men 
in the other wards. 



144 AMERICAN LEADERS 

He hoped the Government would emancipate the 
slaves by buying them from their owners. But this 
was not to be, and on January 1, 1863, he signed the 
Emancipation Proclamation, "the most vital docu- 
ment of the century." So the United States pledged 
itself to freedom. 

In July of the same year came the terrible tri- 
umph of Gettysburg. Read The Perfect Tribute by 
Mrs. Andrews, and learn how, when the following 
November a part of the battlefield was set aside as 
a national cemetery, Lincoln, in three minutes, 
gave voice to the nation's litany, ending, "that 
government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

No less immortal are the words of his second 
inaugural. By that time, March 4, 1865, the long 
strain of the war was almost over, and with char- 
acteristic sympathy and understanding Lincoln 
spoke. "With malice toward none; with charity 
for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us 
to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work 
we are in." 

But "to finish the work" was not given him. 
Lee surrendered April 9, and for almost a week the 
President knew some relief from crushing care. 
Then came the night of April 14, when Mrs. 
Lincoln had planned a box party at Ford's Theater. 
Reluctantly Lincoln put on the white kid gloves he 



THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 145 

SO disliked to wear. But he found relaxation in 
the play. Just as the third act was about to begin 
there was a sharp report, a sudden cry in the 
President's box. Over the railing and down to 
the stage sprang the assassin, crying "5/c semper 
tyrannis! The South is avenged!" 

Into a humble home across the street they car- 
ried the unconscious Lincoln. In the quiet of early 
morning his great soul left its earthly tabernacle. 
The whole world mourned, not only his own coun- 
try, but foreign lands. Dimly then the people saw 
what the world visions clearly today — that this 
was a man absolutely without ambition for him- 
self, wholly and unreservedly a man of. the people, 
a lover of humanity, one whose consuming passion 
was to serve. 

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a lordly cedar, green of boughs, 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 




Horace Greeley 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Antislavery Editor 

"I CHERISH the hope that the journal I projected 
and established will live and flourish long after I 
shall have mouldered into forgotten dust; and that 
the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future 
eyes the still intelligible inscription, 

Founder of the New York Tribune." 

So wrote Horace Greeley in the closing year of his 
life. The words were a paraphrase of the ones he 
had uttered when a tiny boy. A visitor in the little 
country school patted the six-year-old pupil patron- 
izingly on the head, asking, "And what are you 
going to be, my little man?" The thin, white, 
frail child looked his questioner directly in the 
eye and answered firmly, "Sir, I intend to be an 
editor." 

Between these two statements lay a lifetime of 
hard work and struggle. Horace Greeley was born 
February 3, 1811, into a home that knew nothing 
but work and struggle — except a mother that was 
all energy and cheerfulness. Her only recreation 
was to tell stories to the children in the evening 
while she sewed or mended or ironed, but she never 
knew discouragement. 

149 



150 AMERICAN LEADERS 

At two years of age little Horace had learned 
his letters from the big family Bible spread open 
on the floor. At the age of three he started to the 
district school, and by the time he was six he had 
read through the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. 
In the home were just twenty books and these he 
read and reread by the light of pine knots blazing 
on the hearth. For very early in life he had to give 
the daylight hours to farm work, but the evening 
hours were his own, and when a book was in his 
hand the world was shut out. 

The first money Horace earned he spent for a 
volume of Shakespeare. When eleven years old he 
determined to seek work at the nearest newspaper of- 
fice, nine miles distant. But the editor looked at the 
little towhead, and said, "You are too young, boy." 

Three years later he again tried for work in a 
printing office — this time with success. He joined 
a debating society whose other members were the 
minister, the doctor, the lawyer, and the teachers 
of the little town. Soon the young printer was ac- 
knowledged the equal of any in speaking and 
writing. For four years he worked, learning the 
trade and sending all money not needed for his 
living to his parents, who had left the hills of Ver- 
mont for those of Pennsylvania. Twice the home- 
sick boy tramped the six hundred miles that lay 
between, consumed by a longing to see his parents. 



THE ANTISLAVERY EDITOR 151 

In time he made a memorable decision. Small- 
town work was uncertain and offered no future. 
He would quit it for the ''great metropolis," as he 
termed New York City. 

At sunrise, Friday, August 18, 1831, he landed 
near the Battery, with ten dollars in his pocket. 
First he sought a room and board, and found both 
for two dollars and a half a week! Then he went 
on a quest for work. But Sunday dawned with 
nothing in view. He attended church twice, and 
late at night, undaunted and intending to resume 
his search the next morning, was about to retire 
when a visitor to the house called up to him, "I 
hear Mr. West at 85 Chatham Street wants a 
printer." 

At five-thirty the next morning Horace sat on 
the doorstep of the shop. Two hours later the 
foreman came and engaged him to work on a poly- 
glot Testament. By beginning at six in the morn- 
ing and working until nine in the evening he earned 
six dollars a week. According to his custom his 
surplus earnings were sent home. 

For nine years he struggled to attain his life's 
ambition to become an editor. Twice he ventured 
to launch a newspaper. Both The Morning Post 
and The New Yorker died untimely deaths, though 
they brought the young editor many complimentary 
notices and one of them attained a subscription list 



152 AMERICAN LEADERS 

of nine thousand names. Horace Greeley met 
every financial obligation their failure imposed, but 
his experience during these trying years led him to 
say, "Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would 
pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents 
and can get no more for a week, buy corn and live 
on it rather than owe any man a dollar." 

But in 1840 his fortune changed. He had be- 
come greatly interested in politics and was an ar- 
dent supporter of the Whig party. That party de- 
sired a campaign paper to push the candidacy of 
William Henry Harrison for President. Greeley 
was asked to edit this paper. The Log Cabin, and so 
successfully did he fill the editor's chair that he 
found himself in April, 1841, possessed of enough 
money to found a newspaper of his own. 

From the beginning it was a paper of ideals, and 
its columns were open to every worthy reform 
movement. Greeley said frankly, "It is better to 
incur the trouble of testing and exploding a thou- 
sand fallacies than, by rejecting, to stifle a single 
helpful truth." 

Among other movements, women's rights, vege- 
tarianism, and temperance reform, found a hearing 
in the Tribune, but preeminently the paper was 
known for its strong antislavery bias. At the 
same time Greeley was not a member of any Aboli- 
tionist society and rarely found time to attend an 



THE A N TISLA VER Y EDI TOR 1 5 3 

Abolition meeting. Yet the feeling against him was 
most bitter in some sections of the country. At 
Richmond he was indicted for circulating an in- 
cendiary publication, and some postmasters re- 
fused to deliver the paper at their offices. Yet the 
view he held and the course he advised were less 
radical than that of many leaders. He advocated 
interference with slavery by lawful means only and 
its confinement to the states where it already ex- 
isted. Strongly he urged buying the slaves instead 
of going to war. Always he drew a distinct line 
between social and political reforms. The first he 
believed should be brought about by the education 
of the people; the second by Government action 
through organized parties. 

His paper became a power in the land and Mr. 
Greeley was called upon to lecture far and wide. 
His white hat and white coat became known every- 
where in the land; and their wearer, by his intensely 
sympathetic nature and fearless advocacy of any 
cause he deemed right, became one of the most 
warmly loved and bitterly hated men in America. 

After the war he urged suffrage for the black as 
well as for the white, but he urged also "universal 
amnesty." He wanted the past buried as quickly 
as possible, and he was one of the twenty men who 
signed Jefferson Davis' bail bond for one hundred 
thousand dollars, and so procured his release from 



154 AMERICAN LEADERS 

Fortress Monroe where Davis had been for two 
years. 

In 1872 the Republican party split and the 
"Liberals" nominated Horace Greeley for President. 
The Democrats also accepted him as their candi- 
date; but General Grant, running for his second 
term, received a half million majority. 

For years Horace Greeley had served his coun- 
try and his party with very little political reward. 
But this blow, which, under normal conditions, 
would have crushed the man, was preceded by one 
which made political reverses seem but trifling. 
One month before the election his deeply loved wife 
died. After her death Mr. Greeley could not sleep, 
and, very shortly, brain fever developed. On 
November 29 he followed her to the "eternal 
world" which he assured his two daughters, "I ap- 
proach with an awe that is not fear, and a con- 
sciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope." 

The entire nation mourned for him. From men 
of every walk in life came words of appreciation of 
his "eminent services and personal purity and 
worth." The city suspended its business life to do 
honor to him. His body lay under an arch of flow- 
ers whose inscription repeated to the thousands who 
passed it his last words on earth, "I know that my 
Redeemer liveth." 




James G. Blaine 



CHAPTER XVII 
The Plumed Knight 

At Indian Hill Farm, near West Brownsville, 
Pa., on January 31, 1830, James Gillespie Blaine 
was born. It was a home of memories as well as 
of hope, for the old stone house, built in 1778, had 
been the first home built in the wilderness west of 
the Monongahela River. Sturdily it fronted the old 
National Road, an enchanted way to a small boy 
with a vivid imagination. Very early he learned 
to recognize the Monkey-Box Mail, the Oyster 
Express, and all the other stage coaches that 
whirled by. 

Until he was seven years of age he lived out of 
doors, then his mother started him on the way of 
men's learning. Teased, as all little boys are, by 
the question, "What will you be when you are a 
man?" he answered promptly, "Maybe I'll be a 
preacher, or a steamboat captain, or a stage driver." 
He paused a moment, then looking his questioner 
directly in the eyes, he added gravely, "But I think 
I'll be a member of Congress." 

Early he gave evidence of a remarkable memory. 
Shortly after he started to school the teacher one 
afternoon suddenly required every pupil to "speak 
157 



158 AMERICAN LEADERS 

a piece." Little James hung back, but when the 
teacher made clear that there could be no evasion 
of the edict, the boy suddenly rose and declaimed 
fervently and reverently the Apostles' Creed! A 
schoolmate had recited it to him two days before 
and the solemn dignity of its periods had deeply 
impressed the nine-year-old boy. 

When he entered Washington and Jefferson Col- 
lege at the age of thirteen he knew by heart many 
chapters in Plutarch's Lives. He soon showed a 
keen aptitude for logic and mathematics, though 
he shone also in history and Literature. He was 
reckoned the best debater in the club, and in knowl- 
edge of politics he was far beyond everyone else in 
college. His room became an informal political 
club, where "Jim" talked by the hour to all who 
would listen and argue. "Many a night," said his 
roommate, "have I had to plead with him to stop 
and let me go to sleep. Often the only way to stop 
him was to turn out our visitors and the lights at 
the same time." 

Sunday invariably found him at church and 
Sunday-school. His love of this day and its asso- 
ciations remained with him through life. Years 
later a special newspaper correspondent wrote, 
"Saturdays we boys out on assignments used to 
manage to get back to Augusta, if we could, that 
we might spend a quiet Sunday afternoon at the 



THE PLUMED KNIGHT 159 

Blaine home. In the evening usually some musical 
friends of the family would come in, and we all had 
a good time singing old-fashioned church tunes, 
for which Blaine had a great fondness." 

Blaine himself always spoke of his college years 
as among the happiest of his life. He often said, 
"To the good old college I owe a debt of gratitude 
I can never repay." After graduating he taught in 
the Western Military Academy in Kentucky. 
Though as young as many of the cadets, he main- 
tained strict discipline. At the same time he was 
most popular with the boys, all of whom he knew 
by name. He knew, too, wherein lay each boy's 
weakness and his strength. 

After five years here he went to an institute for 
the blind, in Philadelphia, as a teacher of science 
and literature. But his wife, who had been a 
fellow-teacher in Kentucky, longed for her home in 
Maine. So in 1854 they moved to Augusta, and 
Blaine became editor and part owner of the Ken- 
nebec Journal. His vigorous writing soon made 
this a leading Whig organ, a powerful influence in 
politics. 

The Whig party broke up and Blaine worked 
strenuously organizing the new Republican party 
in Maine. From his adopted state he was sent to 
Philadelphia in 1856 as a delegate to the first Re- 
publican convention. On his return he gave his 



160 AMERICAN LEADERS 

report at a public meeting. Timidly he began, but 
as he spoke he forgot himself, and he left the plat- 
form an acknowledged orator. 

In 1858 he became a member of the state legis- 
lature, where he distinguished himself as a hard 
worker and a fine speaker. Two of three years he 
spent here he was Speaker of the House, and so 
impartial were his decisions and so dignified his 
bearing that he became very popular throughout 
the state. In 1860 he went as a delegate to the 
Chicago convention which nominated Abraham 
Lincoln for the Presidency. Blaine campaigned 
Maine for Lincoln, winning many friends for the 
party by his own personal magnetism and by his 
convincing speeches. "Send us Blaine," asked 
every committee that wanted a speaker. 

In 1862 he was sent to Congress and soon proved 
a warm friend and a trusted adviser of the Presi- 
dent. Rapidly he forged to the front in the na- 
tion's councils as he had in that of the state. In 
1869 he became Speaker of the National House of 
Representatives. As a boy in college he had mas- 
tered Cushing's Manual in one evening. As a man 
he was distinguished for his thorough knowledge 
of parliamentary rules, his quickness, and his im- 
pressiveness in the chair. It is said he never for- 
got a name, a fact, or a face. It became one of the 
sights of Washington to see the rapidity and accu- 



THE PLUMED KNIGHT 161 

racy with which Speaker Blaine counted a standing 
House for ayes and noes. 

In the Republican National Convention of 1876 
Colonel IngersoU presented James G. Blaine's 
name as Presidential nominee in these words: 
"Like a plumed knight James G. Blaine marched 
the halls of the American Congress and threw his 
sliining lance full and fair against the brazen fore- 
head of the maligners of his honor." This title of 
honor clung to him for the rest of his days, and the 
helmet of Navarre with its long white plume was 
its visible emblem. 

Though he was again proposed for nomination in 
1880, it was not until 1884 that the National Con- 
vention nominated him as Presidential candidate. 
In the meantime he served as Secretary of State 
under President Garfield. On February 27, 1882, 
he delivered before the House of Representatives 
one of the great orations of all time — a eulogy of 
the martyred President. The closing paragraph is 
often quoted as an example of pure eloquence: 

"Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore 
the sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea — 
to live or to die, as God should will. Within sight 
of its heaving billows he looked out wistfully upon 
the ocean's changing wonders. . . . Let us think 
that his dying eyes read their mystic meaning. 
. . . Let us believe that in the silence of the re- 



162 AMERICAN LEADERS 

ceding world he heard the great waves breaking on 
a farther shore, and he felt already upon his wasted 
brow the breath of the eternal morning." 

In 1884 everything pointed to Blaine's election. 
But the last week of the campaign a minister, Rev. 
Samuel D. Burchard, head of a delegation visiting 
him at his hotel in New York, used what he thought 
was a telling phrase: "We are Republicans and we 
don't propose to identify ourselves with a party 
whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, 
and Rebellion." This gave rise to the rumor that 
Blaine was the avowed enemy of the Catholic 
Church, though he announced publicly, ''I would 
not, for a thousand Presidencies, speak a disrespect- 
ful word of my mother's religion." Later this 
statement gave rise in turn to the report that 
Blaine was Roman Catholic in sympathy in spite 
of the fact that he had been an active member of 
the Congregational church in Augusta for years. 
But these wild tales lost New York's vote for him, 
and the election was so close elsewhere that New 
York had the casting vote. 

During the next four years Blaine traveled abroad 
and also wrote an invaluable reference work, 
Twenty Years in Congress. He refused to be con- 
sidered for the Presidential nomination in 1888, but 
he did serve as Secretary of State under Benjamin 
Harrison. Never did his staunch Americanism show 



THE PLUMED KNIGHT 163 

itself more clearly than in his reply to Italy. "The 
United States has never yet permitted its policy 
to be dictated by any foreign power, and it will not 
begin to do so now." All his foreign policy was 
marked by an equal blending of calmness, courage, 
and firmness. 

It was James G. Blaine who brought the repub- 
lics of America together in the Pan-American Con- 
gress of 1889. This Congress made many wise 
recommendations, and strongly advised that ar- 
bitration be adopted as a method for the settle- 
ment of any difficulties between the American re- 
publics. 

In 1892 illness compelled Blaine to resign from 
the Cabinet, and January 27, 1893, he passed 
away. Of him Chauncey Depew said, "He will 
stand in our history as the ablest parliamentarian 
and the most skilful debater of our Congressional 
history. He had an unusual combination of bound- 
less audacity with infinite tact. No man, during 
his active career, disputed with him his hold upon 
the people's imagination, and his leadership of his 
party. He left no successor who possessed, as he 
possessed it, the affection and confidence of his 
followers." 




John Hay 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Man of the Open Door and the 
Golden Rule 

In 1841, when John Hay was but three years 
old, his father, Dr. Charles Hay, moved the family 
from the little one-storied brick house that was 
their home in Salem, Ind., to Warsaw, 111., a frontier 
settlement on a yellow bluff of the Mississippi. 
The little town was peopled with descendants of 
the Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers of 
Virginia. That meant that though life was hard 
and privation the sauce of everyday existence, yet 
ideals nurtured the soul and inspired the intellect 
of the village. 

At that time it did not seem strange for little 
John Milton Hay to begin his school life at an age 
when the babies of today are still in the nursery. 
From three to thirteen he studied in a little red 
brick schoolhouse which still stands in the sleepy 
village. Always he had a "habit of stringing words 
together into rhymes." As a little lad of six he 
announced one day to his brother Charles, ''I have 
seen the end of the world." 

"What was it like?" 

"All trees, and birds, and flowers." 
167 



168 AMERICAN LEADERS 

So the unbroken forest that elbowed the town 
looked to the tiny poet. 

At home his father taught him Greek and Latin. 
"He spoke German like a native, having picked it 
up, just as he gathered an inexhaustible repertoire 
of 'river slang' from the Mississippi River steam- 
boatmen, which served its turn later on in the 
Tike County Ballads!' " A schoolmate says, "We 
all remember John Hay as a red-cheeked, black- 
eyed, sunshiny boy, chockful of fun and devilment 
that hurt nobody." 

Later he studied at a preparatory school in 
Springfield. Here he was fitted for college. One 
month before he was seventeen, September 7, 1855, 
he entered Brown University. One classmate tells 
us, "He was a comely young man, quiet and re- 
served, yet frank, manly, and a most delightful 
companion." Another says, "His voice was mu- 
sical, his speech and demeanor betrayed the child 
of a home of refinement." 

At the first Freshman dinner the toastmaster 
summoned, "Hay!" 

"We don't want anything dry," a youth shouted. 

"Hay that is green can never be dry," retorted 
the country boy from Illinois. Then he poured out 
a sparkling speech that once for all made his school 
reputation. 

He was recognized as a young man that would 



MAN OF OPEN DOOR AND GOLDEN RULE 169 

neither do a mean act nor tolerate one, and his 
chivalry long remained a fragrant memory at 
Brown. At one time he rescued a Freshman whom 
the Sophomores were smoking out. Years later 
when Hay was Secretary of State, he was asked for 
the facts. 

"I don't remember," he replied. Then he added, 
whimsically, "But my recollection of everything in 
those far-off days is dim and heroism was my daily 
habit. I couldn't sleep nights if I hadn't saved 
somebody's life. Now I only save a nation now 
and then." 

College days over, John Hay entered his uncle's 
law office in Springfield. Next door was the office 
of Lincoln and Herndon. Lincoln at once took 
John Hay to his heart and gave up many evenings 
to teaching him law. When the White House 
opened its doors to Lincoln in 1861 he took with 
him as assistant private secretary the rosy-cheeked 
young man of twenty-three. 

Lincoln's private secretary, John G. Nicolay, 
was a close friend of John Hay, and the friendship 
grew with the years. Later in life they wrote to- 
gether an authoritative life of Lincoln, Abraham 
Lincoln: a History. This, in reality more a history 
of the times than a biography, will live as long as 
Lincoln's name lives. One critic says, "As the 
Lincoln legend grows, men will turn again and 



170 AMERICAN LEADERS 

again to the record of the two young secreta- 
ries who walked and talked with him, saw him 
most intimately as man, as statesman, and as 
saviour of Democracy, and came to love him as 
hero-friend." 

For Nicolay and Hay lived several years at the 
White House within a moment's call of the Presi- 
dent. During the Civil War, Hay acted not only 
as secretary but as confidential messenger and 
family friend. After the war Hay was offered a 
place in the legation at Paris. But before he sailed 
the assassin's bullet cut short the life of the master 
among men who had been as a father to him. 

After two years at Paris John Hay served an- 
other two years at Vienna. From there the path 
of diplomacy led him to Spain. From this country 
he sent home some delightful articles, afterward col- 
lected in book form as Castilian Days. After his 
return to America, in 1870, he served five years as 
editorial writer on the New York Tribune. Horace 
Greeley used to say that Hay was the most brilliant 
writer who had ever entered the office. 

John Hay's marriage with Miss Stone, of Clever 
land, took him to that city, where for five years he 
was in business. But in 1881 he returned to Wash- 
ington as Assistant Secretary of State. In this city 
were friends especially dear to him, and ''infinitely 
more precious to John Hay than anything money 



MAN OF OPEN DOOR AND GOLDEN RULE 171 

could buy were his friendships." With none was 
the tie closer than with Henry Adams. "Seldom 
a day passed that they did not see each other." 
Others of this congenial circle were Clarence King 
and Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt. Here then 
John Hay and his family set up a permanent home. 

His real career as a diplomatist did not begin 
until 1896, when President McKinley sent him to 
represent the United States in England. To a 
friend the President confided, "To my mind, John 
Hay is the fairest flower of our civilization." Two 
important services for his country he rendered dur- 
ing his stay in England. By his personal influence 
he cemented the friendship between these two 
Anglo-Saxon nations, and it was his potent per- 
sonality also which swung English opinion in favor 
of America during her war with Spain. 

Reluctantly he returned from England to assume 
the duties of Secretary of State under President 
McKinley. Not robust physically, he found the 
duties of that office wearing to body and spirit. 
"More than once he was on the verge of a break- 
down, but he kept on with his work, and the 
public, not seeing behind the scenes, knew only 
that with John Hay as Secretary of State the na- 
tional honor and safety were assured." 

The assassination of President McKinley was a 
severe shock to the overworked man. Yet at Theo- 



172 AMERICAN LEADERS 

dore Roosevelt's urgent request he continued his 
work. The friendship between the two men was 
strong and enduring. Every Sunday afternoon 
they walked together, and the President said, "Mr, 
Hay is the most charming man and delightful com- 
panion I have ever known." 

"The Open Door and the Golden Rule" became 
John Hay's synonym after the attempt of the 
European powers to partition China. September 
6, 1899, is the date of his first famous note on the 
"Open Door." It was but one of a series of frank, 
sincere, direct letters with foreign powers. Each 
note was marked by loyalty to the principles 
of the "Golden Rule," a distinct departure in 
diplomacy. 

Other diplomatic triumphs followed. Working 
with Lord Pauncefote, the British ambassador, he 
made a new treaty with Great Britain regarding 
the Panama Canal. Later, treaties with Columbia 
and Panama were concluded. In 1899 he settled 
trouble with Germany in Samoa, and in 1903 
through his efforts the disputes about the Alaskan 
boundary were settled. The same year he chal- 
lenged Russia as to her intentions in Manchuria, 
and obtained from her a promise to leave the coun- 
try. In all, fifty-eight international agreements 
were concluded while John Hay was connected 
with the Department of State. In each one the 



MAN OF OPEN DOOR AND GOLDEN RULE 173 

Monroe Doctrine and the Golden Rule for all the 
world were the ground of his policy. 

In April of 1905, to avert a breakdown, he went to 
Europe for rest and change. In June he returned 
but little better, and on going to his summer home 
in Newbury, N. H., he failed rapidly. The end 
came July first. Through the woods to the rail- 
road station. Hay's favorite white horse drew the 
forsaken husk of his departed spirit. The rain 
fell in torrents on the plain covered wagon. In- 
voluntarily there comes to mind his poem, "The 
Stirrup Cup": 

My short and happy day is done, 
The long and dreary night comes on; 
And at my door, the Pale Horse stands, 
To carry me to unknown lands. 

Though many other of his poems are loved and 
cherished, during the Great War America took one 
directly to her heart. John Hay wrote it in the 
dark' days of the Civil War, but its sentiment is 
timeless: 



There's a happy time coming, when the boys come home; 
There's a glorious day coming, when the boys come home; 
We will end the dreadful story 
Of the battle, dark and gory, 
In a sunburst of glory, 
When the boys come home. 



174 AMERICAN LEADERS 

In 1917 Oley Speaks set this poem to music, and 
on the fields of France America's sons sang it. And 
at home, parents and friends sang: 

Our love shall go to greet them, when the boys come home; 

To bless them and to greet them, when the boys come home; 

And the fame of their endeavor 

Time and change shall not dissever 

From the nation's heart forever, , 

When the boys come home. 




Booker T. Washington 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Boy Without a Birthday 

"I WAS born a slave on a plantation in Franklin 
County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact 
place or the exact date of my birth." So writes 
Booker T. Washington in Up From Slavery, the 
story of his life. 

Jane, his mother, a cook for the plantation 
slaves, gave 1857 as approximately the year of his 
entry into life here. The one-room cabin he shared 
with his mother and sister and brother was a poor 
makeshift for a home. There was no glass in the 
openings that let in the h'ght, so the cold of winter 
came in also. The door, too small for the frame, 
hung on one hinge, and in the center of the earth 
floor was a hole covered with loose boards, where 
sweet potatoes were stored for the winter. "We 
slept on a bundle of filthy rags in one corner. . . . 
Meals were gotten by us in very much the same 
manner as dumb animals get theirs, a piece of 
cornbread here, a scrap of meat there." 

Freedom brought no change for the better, but 

rather for the worse. Booker's stepfather, a slave 

on an adjoining plantation, used his new privilege 

to migrate to Maiden, a salt and mining town in 

177 



178 AMERICAN LEADERS 

West Virginia. As soon as he found work the little 
family followed. The mother rode in a rude cart 
with the few household goods, but the children 
walked nearly all the distance — several hundred 
miles. They reached their journey's end to find the 
new home worse than the old. It was but one of a 
huddle of shanties, surrounded by filth. Worse 
yet, drinking, gambHng, and fighting went on all 
the time. 

Young as they were the two boys were put to 
work at the salt furnaces. Still Booker clung to 
the only intense desire of his life, the longing to 
learn to read. He had had it always from his ear- 
liest remembrance, and when in some way his mother 
got him an old "blue-back" speller his joy knew no 
bounds. He knew the first step was to learn the 
alphabet, but not one person of his color in the 
little village could help him. Somehow, he never 
quite knew how, in a few weeks he had mastered 
nearly every letter. 

Soon afterward the colored people planned to 
open a small school and Booker's hopes ran high. 
But he reckoned without his stepfather, who told 
the faithful little worker that he must not quit 
earning money. His mother shared most sympa- 
thetically in Booker's keen disappointment. "She 
sought to comfort me in all the ways she could, 
and to help me find a way to learn. If I have 



THE BOY WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 179 

done anything in life, I inherited the disposition 
from my mother." 

She it was who kept coaxing the stepfather until 
he grudgingly allowed the boy to go to school from 
nine to four, on condition that he be at the salt 
furnace promptly at four in the morning and return 
to his work after school. Upon entering school two 
difficulties arose — the boy had no cap and but one 
name, "Booker." Never had he worn a head 
covering; but every other boy in school possessed 
something that went by the name of "cap," and 
Booker longed for one, too. His mother solved 
that problem by sewing together two pieces of 
homespun. Booker himself solved the other by 
answering calmly when the teacher asked for his 
full name, "Booker Washington." Years later the 
man who as a little lad had given himself a name 
wrote, "I resolved then that because I had no an- 
cestry myself I would leave a record of which my 
children would be proud, one which might encour- 
age them to higher effort." 

For only a little time was the boy allowed to go 
to school. Soon his stepfather put him in a coal 
mine where he could earn more money for the 
family. However, he kept on studying at night. 
One fortunate day he overheard two miners talking 
as they worked of a school where colored boys 
could work while they gained an education. Booker 



180 AMERICAN LEADERS 

asked where the school was, but the men knew only 
that the name was "Hampton." "I resolved at 
once to go to that school — the thought was with 
me day and night." 

He told his brother John of his burning desire 
and this big-hearted boy at once answered, "I will 
help you all I can; afterward you can help me to 
get an education." So encouraged, Booker's desire 
crystallized into a resolve. 

In time the way opened for him to work in the 
home of General Ruffner, the owner of the mine. 
Mrs. Ruffner sympathized with his aspirations and 
allowed him to study part of every day. In this 
household he learned many lessons as valuable as 
his later education — lessons of order, neatness, 
system; better still, the value of absolute honesty 
and frankness. 

In the fall of 1872 the boy, then about fifteen, 
started for Hampton. Most of his earnings had 
gone to the family support, but he and John had 
saved a little for the great adventure. He went by 
train and coach so long as his money held out. At 
a mountain inn he was denied food and shelter even 
in an outside shed, and to keep warm he had to 
walk up and down the road all through the night. 
He reached Richmond without one cent in liis 
pocket. Never before had he been in a city. Be- 
wildered and faint with hunger, he finally slipped 



THE BOY WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 181 

under a boardwalk and, with his little satchel for 
a pillow, forgot his troubles in sleep. Morning 
brought cheer, for near by he found men unloading 
a vessel of pig iron. He helped, and so earned 
enough money to finish his journey to Hampton 
Institute. 

So forlorn in appearance was the boy that the 
registrar hesitated long about admitting him. 
At last, handing him a broom and duster, she said, 
"Clean the room next to this." 

"I swept three times. I dusted four times. 
Every piece of furniture had been moved and every 
closet and corner in the room thoroughly cleaned 
before I called the teacher." She took her handker- 
chief to test the quality of the boy's work and finally 
said, "I guess you will do to enter this institution." 

So he passed his entrance examination and also 
paved the way to the post of janitor, the work that 
supported him for three years until his graduation. 
These were years rich in opportunity and rich in 
blessing. The young negro's conception of the 
meaning of life expanded from the desire for an 
education as a personal benefit to the vision of an 
education as a means of service to others. ''Before 
the end of the first year I began learning that those 
are happiest who do the most for others. . . . 
That which made the most impression on me was a 
great man, the noblest, rarest human being it had 



182 AMERICAN LEADERS 

ever been my privilege to meet — General Samuel C. 
Armstrong. I do not believe he ever had a selfish 
thought. Had the students been given nothing 
but the opportunity of coming into daily contact 
with General Armstrong, that alone would have been 
a liberal education. . . . 

''There I learned how to use and value the Bible. 
There I learned to love to read it; so that, no mat- 
ter how busy I am, I always make it a rule to read 
a chapter in the morning before beginning the work 
of the day." 

In June, 1875, Booker Washington graduated, 
and entered life, as he had school, without a penny 
in his pocket. Back to Maiden he went to teach, 
and by his example and sympathy to transform the 
life of the community. In two years he prepared 
his two brothers (one an adopted brother) and four 
others to enter Hampton. After a year of further 
study at Washington he was recalled to Hampton 
to be house-father and preceptor to seventy-five 
Indian boys whom General Armstrong was bring- 
ing from the reservations to learn the ways of 
civilized life. So successful was he that the follow- 
ing year he was asked to take charge also of a night 
school made up of students who worked during the 
day in sawmill and laundry. This "Plucky Class" 
proved most studious, and became a feature of the 
school life. 



THE BOY WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 183 

In May, 1881, General Armstrong was asked to 
recommend someone to take charge of a school for 
colored people in Tuskegee, Ala. Under the im- 
pression that the building and equipment were in 
readiness, Booker Washington was sent. He found 
— nothing! The legislature had appropriated two 
thousand dollars for salaries, but all else was want- 
ing. Booker Washington, however, was inured to 
discouragement, and he firmly believed there was a 
way out of every trouble. "Absolutely nothing 
could thwart him." 

The colored Methodist church and an adjoining 
shanty, both half in ruins, would serve as temporary 
classrooms ; but where were the pupils? The month 
of June was spent by Washington in traveling 
among the people of his color, arousing ambition 
in families who lived in the most primitive manner. 
When the school opened, July 4, thirty pupils, most 
of them of middle age, presented themselves. By 
the end of the first month there were fifty. Two 
weeks later Miss Olivia Davidson was added to the 
teaching force. Booker Washington's aims for the 
little school, he tells us, were "To teach the students 
how to care for their bodies; how to clean their 
rooms ; to give them a practical knowledge of some 
one industry, together with the spirit of thrift 
and industry. We wanted them to return home to 
put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well 



184 AMERICAN LEADERS 

as into the intellectual and moral and spiritual life 
of the people." 

The school grew in numbers and also in its need 
for buildings and equipment. But Booker Wash- 
ington's faith grew, too. "He believed in himself, 
in his fellow-men, and in God." Over and over in 
his life this faith was signally justified; never more 
was it justified than in the opportunity which 
came within three months to buy an abandoned 
plantation of five hundred acres for five hundred 
dollars. Never in his life had Washington had 
one hundred dollars, yet he borrowed two hun- 
dred and fifty and began, with Miss Davidson's 
help, devising means to earn the rest and to repay 
the loan. With the students' help he cleaned and 
repaired the few buildings for use as dormitories 
and classrooms. Both white and colored helped 
as they could. One poor old mammy gave Booker 
Washington a bandanna handkerchief, saying, "I 
don fotch dese yer six eggs. Put dem inter de 
eddication of dese yer boys and girls. I'se ig'rant 
and po', an' all dat, but I kin help a leetle." 

Such faith and such a spirit of cooperation pro- 
duced the inevitable result. Tuskegee grew in 
land, in buildings, in equipment. Better still, it 
graduated men and women of character — leaders 
who went out to carry the flame of industry and 
righteousness to the darkest corners of the Black 



THE BOY WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 185 

Belt. Incidents innumerable could be told of 
money that came at opportune times. One of 
Booker Washington's tenets of faith was, "If we 
keep this institution clean and pure and whole- 
some, it will be supported." 

So for thirty years this great leader worked to 
make for the negro a place in American life. He 
visioned a day of good will, respect, and neighbor- 
liness between the white and the black. "In all 
things that are purely social we can be as separate 
as the fingers, yet one as the hands in all things 
essential to mutual progress." He spoke thus in 
his address at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. 

Many unsought honors came to him, the direct 
result of his faithful work for his race. In 1896 
Harvard conferred on him the honorary degree of 
Master of Arts, and in 1899 friends sent him and 
his wife abroad for a well-earned rest. By this 
time Booker Washington was a national figure, a 
lecturer, and the author of many books written for 
the inspiration of his own people. In October, 1915, 
at Yale University, he delivered his last address. 
From there he went to New York, where he suf- 
fered a complete breakdown. When told that his 
end was near he asked to be taken home to Tuske- 
gee. There the morning after his arrival, Novem- 
ber 14, his spirit fled. "When Booker Washington 
died America lost one of its greatest spirits." 




Theodore Roosevelt 



CHAPTER XX 

"The American" 

So the Middle West knew Theodore Roosevelt. 
So now the whole world knows him. "All men 
wish that their sons might have within them the 
spirit, the will, the strength, the manliness, the 
Americanism of Roosevelt." His friend. General 
Wood says, "He did more than any other President 
to make the world realize what the United States 
stands for." Senator Lodge adds, "He was a great 
man, above all, a great American. His country was 
the ruling, mastering passion of his life even unto 
the end." 

"Even unto the end," for the night before his 
death this last message was read to his fellow- 
Americans: "There must be no sagging back in 
the fight for Americanism. We have room for but 
one flag, the American flag — and this excludes the 
red flag; we have room for but one language here, 
the English language; we have room for but one 
soul — loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American 
people." 

Preeminently an American, Theodore Roosevelt 
was also statesman, soldier, hunter, ranchman, ex- 
plorer, writer, and naturalist. Best of all, to count- 
189 



190 AMERICAN LEADERS 

less thousands he was the fulfilment of their own 
good intentions. He was the doer of the deeds that 
many aspire to but lack the will power to accom- 
plish. 

Theodore Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858, 
at 28 East Twentieth Street, New York City. His 
father's family had come to "Niuew Amsterdam" 
when it had but five hundred inhabitants. His 
mother, Martha Bulloch, was of an old family in 
Georgia. With perfect sweetness both held their 
opposing convictions during the Civil War. Once 
Theodore, when about five, felt he had been 
wronged by maternal discipline. So he took occa- 
sion, kneeling by his mother's knee at bedtime, to 
pray with loud fervor for the success of the Union 
army. 

From babyhood Theodore suffered from asthma 
and for years he could sleep only in a sitting pos- 
ture. Often in the summer to ease his suffering his 
father would drive with him half the night. It was 
at this time, when he was still in kilts, that he read 
Livingston's Travels and Researches. Cooper soon 
became an intimate and with Natty Bumpo he 
lived the life of the frontier. 

The summer he was nine, with the skull of a seal 
he started the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural 
History." He began, too, his first book, Natural 
History of Insects. The opening paragraph reads. 



"THE AMERICAN" 191 

"I will write about ants first. All the insects I 
write about in this book inhabbit North America. 
Now and then a friend has told me something about 
them, but mostly I have gained their habits from 
ofservation." 

The summers were spent in the country, and by 
the time Theodore was thirteen he was studying 
nature in real earnest. A former companion of 
Audubon's taught him taxidermy, and another 
friend explained to him in simple language the 
scientific theories of the day. He had tutors, and 
from his father, whom he loved as be never loved 
any other man, he learned much. And he read. 
How he read! More in one year than most boys in 
ten ! His range was wide : history, biography, tales 
of wildest adventure, and, strangely enough, Little 
Women and Jo^s Boys. 

At the age of fourteen one of life's great moments 
came to him. He read these lines of Browning's, 

All that the old dukes had been without knowing it, 
This Duke would fain know he was without being it. 

That is, you see, the Duke wanted to appear to 
be like the ancestors he admired without making 
any effort actually to he like them. "These lines 
pulled Theodore Roosevelt up sharp, like a lasso. 
Had he wanted to be like his heroes, or had he 
wanted only to appear like them?" 



192 AMERICAN LEADERS 

His will was aroused. It expressed itself in the 
resolve henceforth to dream no dream without 
translating it into action. The result was that by 
the time he was fifteen and began to prepare for 
college he had some traits other boys had not. 
First, he had a deep-rooted resolve to excel; sec- 
ond, he saw clearly that no man can attain except 
by constant struggle against the sloth, the false 
content in his own heart; third, he realized that 
mind and body must develop together. 

So realizing, "Out of a weak child, he made a 
powerful man; out of half-blindness, he made a 
boxer, an omnivorous reader, a good shot; out of 
liking for authorship, rather than a talent for it, 
he made a distinguished author; out of a voice 
never meant for oratory, he made a public speaker." 

He himself said in middle life, "To tell the truth, 
I like to believe that, by what I have accomplished 
without great gifts, I may be a source of encourage- 
ment to American boys." 

Before going to Harvard at eighteen, he joined 
the church of his fathers, the Dutch Reformed. 
His boyhood pastor, speaking in 1919 in the church 
on Long Island where Roosevelt had worshiped for 
over forty years, said, "I give you the words Theo- 
dore Roosevelt spoke when he came to me about 
joining the church: 'If you believe a thing is good 
and true, say so. If you see a duty, do it.' " 



"THE AMERICAN" 193 

During all his college life he taught in Sunday- 
school. Few preachers knew the Bible better than 
he, or quoted it more apropos. He did many other 
things at Harvard and did them all well. Increas- 
ingly fixed became his determination to build up 
his mind and body so that he might be a man who 
did things. He made two friendships at this time 
that influenced his entire life. One was with Alice 
Hathaway Lee, whom he married the fall after 
graduation, and lost two years later; the other, 
with Bill Sewall, a guide in the Maine pine forests. 
This man said, "We hitched up well from the start. 
He was fair-minded, Theodore was, and then he 
took pains to learn everything." 

He came back from his honeymoon to enter 
politics, affirming, "He who has not wealth owes 
his first duty to his family, but he who has means 
owes his time to the state." His twenty- third 
birthday found him in the legislature at Albany, 
and for thirty-five years he served his country in 
city, state, and nation. Here is a brief epitome of 
his career: 

"A young New York Assemblyman; a ranchman; 
Civil Service Commissioner in Washington; Police 
Commissioner of New York City; Assistant Secre- 
tary of the Navy; Lieutenant-Colonel of the Rough 
Riders in the Spanish War ; Governor of New York ; 
Vice-President of the United States; President of 



194 AMERICAN LEADERS 

the United States; editorial writer; hunter of big 
game." 

And he was a lover of home. For he left the 
ranch to marry the playmate of his early childhood. 
In his last book he said, "The primary work of 
man and woman must be the primal work of home- 
making and home-keeping. We must do this work, 
and do it well, that the nation may continue to 
exist." 

In his last tribute to his friend, Senator Lodge 
said, "The absolute purity and beauty of Theodore 
Roosevelt's family life tell us why the pride and 
interest which his fellow-countrymen felt in him 
were always touched by the warm light of love. In 
the home so dear to him, in his sleep, death came, 
and 

So Valiant-for-Truth passed over, and the trumpets sounded 
for him on the other side." 

This was January 6, 1919, and yet daily, by thou- 
sands, fellow-Americans visit his grave. "No such 
tribute has ever been paid to any other American. 
To only one other has any such personal devotion 
ever been given and that other was Lincoln. Of 
each it may be said, 'He, being dead, yet speaketh.' " 



